Forbidden Fruit
by petitesorciere
Summary: A spell gone awry has serious consequences for the distance that Draco and Hermione seek to keep between them.
1. Chapter 1

Forbidden Fruit

Draco bit into his apple, and reflected that if all the things that challenged him would give way as easily as the crisp flesh beneath the apple's skin, his life would be considerably simpler. It was all very well for everyone to pretend that they were unflinching in their loyalty to a particular point of view, but at the end of the day, all that was required was the right kind of pressure and everything would cave in.

Take Potter for example. Draco was perfectly sure that if he had approached that particular problem with a different attitude, rather than just going in with all of his Pureblood guns blazing, Harry would be sitting next to him at the Slytherin table, laughing at the Gryffindors and their pathetic morality. Unfortunately, some lessons took time to be learned and that was one battle that he had to concede was well and truly lost. He crunched into the apple again and let his eyes rove around the hall.

There were very few people in the hall that he was not scornful of. All of them were so involved with their trivial little lives and the precise moment that they were in, never thinking that by plotting and scheming, they would be able to ensure a much better future for themselves. So what if a few people got trampled on in the way? As long as you were alright in the end, surely that was what mattered? He sighed, and tossed the half-eaten apple onto his plate. It had served its purpose, so he could disregard it. If only people were apples. He looked at Crabbe, stuffing his maw with the bacon that was meant for the whole table. It was almost painful to watch. "Do you ever think you'll eat enough Crabbe?" He asked, almost kindly.

Crabbe looked at him briefly, shrugged and then turned back to his plate. Draco rolled his eyes to heaven and resumed looking across the room. Pansy swung herself into the seat next to him. "Hi."

Draco nodded and slung his arm around the back of her chair, wondering if he could be bothered to kiss her. Before he could act on any impulse, she had already kissed his cheek and was buttering a slice of toast. He looked in the opposite direction, leaving his arm hanging across her back in his usual proprietary manner. Merlin forbid that anyone think he was actually interested in her. It was more about the image that he needed to provide than any genuine emotion on his part. That was the way that he had always been, and he was perfectly happy with his life the way it was.

*

Hermione looked at Ron in despair. "Honestly, if you just put your fork down between mouthfuls you wouldn't eat half as quickly and you would look so much more civilised."

"Hermione, you think my mum hasn't tried to make him eat properly? You're wasting your time!" Ginny mimed smacking her brother across the back of the head and smiled at Hermione.

Hermione rolled her eyes and dug her spoon deeper into her bowl. "I just think that everyone would be a lot happier if they didn't have to listen to you eating as well as watching it."

Ron smiled at her through a mouthful of food, and she couldn't help laughing, although she instantly resumed lecturing him. "You are quite possibly the most repulsive eater that I have ever seen. Keep your mouth shit while you're chewing. I swear Ron, I will make this more pleasant for everyone else, no matter how much of my time it takes!"

Standing up, she swung her satchel onto her shoulder and waved her goodbyes, her mind already focused on her class and what she would have to achieve. She was the first to arrive in the Charms classroom, relishing the brief moment of solitude before the other chattering students. Sitting down, she looked towards the teacher's desk and saw a bowl of fruit proudly displayed. Raising her eyebrows, she wondered what they were going to be doing with it.

Flitwick watched his class file in and sit down, all of them casting interested glances at the fruit on his desk. Waving his wand, sending a trail of sparks fluttering through the air, he motioned for silence. As it descended across the room, the teacher smiled. "I've noticed your interest in the fruit on my desk. I assure you, we are going to be doing something very interesting with _this_."

Hermione sat up slightly straighter in her seat, causing Draco to glance across at her in irritation. Yes, it was thrilling being in a Charms class (especially one that she got to share with him), but did the girl never cease her evangelical mission to learn everything? Shaking his head in contemptuous disdain, he turned his attention back to Flitwick, supposing that there was something he could learn from the old man.

Flitwick could barely get the words out, he was so excited. "What we are about to attempt is extremely advanced magic! What we are going to do to this fruit is to cast a charm on it that is so powerful that anyone who eats it will feel the most indescribable sensation of…bliss! Once a person has taken a single bite, they will feel the strongest compulsion to continue eating – it is most useful for dinner parties!"

Hermione looked at the teacher with a feeling of slight alarm: he seemed far too thrilled by this idea. With her eyebrows furrowed, she watched as the Charms teacher drew in a deep breath and tried to calm himself. "One has to taste the fruit to truly understand the taste, and how divine it is." He looked longingly at the fruit. "It is a difficult charm to perform, and will require cooperation between all of you. So I will be putting you into pairs."

Hermione looked over her shoulder and smiled at Parvati. Draco looked around the class, wondering who he would deign to work with. Flitwick absentmindedly rattled off couples, and Hermione got consistently more nervous as every partner that she could have conceived working with was paired off with someone else. Soon, the only person left was… "And Miss Granger and Mr Malfoy, and that should sort everyone out. Now, if everyone takes a piece of fruit and returns to their desks." He turned back to the board and watched as, with a flip of his wand, cursive began scrawling across the board.

Hermione sent one panicked look in Draco's direction and ran straight up to Flitwick. "Professor, I really have quite a strong aversion to working with Malfoy. Would it be possible for me to…"

"Work on your own?" Flitwick watched as Hermione nodded enthusiastically. "No, Miss Granger."

"But Professor, I…"

"Miss Granger, this charm is very complex, more so than I feel you are capable of dealing with, regardless of how good a witch you are. I have partnered you with Mr Malfoy for good reason: you are both advanced spell-casters and you will progress well together."

Flitwick turned around to see Draco standing in front of him. He jumped slightly and tried to recover himself; "Ah, Mr Malfoy, here to select your fruit with Miss Granger no doubt."

"No," Draco hissed proudly. "I have come to request a change in my partner. I refuse to work with Miss Granger."

Flitwick looked from one to the other in despair. "The pair of you need to remember that I am the teacher and therefore in charge! I have paired you, and my decision stands!"

He bustled away, leaving Draco and Hermione staring at each other in horror. Hermione rolled her eyes and glared at the blackboard. "I could work this charm on my own. I certainly don't need you."

Draco stared coldly at her. "This situation is, I can assure you, even less to my liking than it is to yours."

"You ought to consider yourself lucky, I'm far cleverer than you!"

"In your dreams maybe, Granger. I know precisely how you think this is going to work: you think you're going to do the perfect spell, get all of Flitwick's praise, and then I'm going to suddenly been in some form of debt to you and be so much friendlier to you!" His voice sneered at her, raising every hair on the back of her neck in angry disagreement.

"How have you managed to progress from me thinking that I'm cleverer than you to me desperately wanting to be your friend? You're clearly more delusional than I had thought."

Draco glared at her and snatched up an apple from the bowl. "Whatever Granger. Let's just get this over with."

"I don't want to do it with an apple." Hermione crossed her arms. She had no special hatred against apples, but there was no way she was going to do anything that he wanted that simply. He could fight for it, if he wanted the apple that badly.

"For Merlin's sake Granger, grow up. It's just an apple." He gave her a disdainful look. "Can we not just do it with this piece of fruit?"

"Miss Granger, why are the pair of you not working yet?" Flitwick called from across the room.

Hermione opened her mouth to protest but found that the words would not come. Sullenly, she followed Draco back to a desk and sat down as he placed the apple in front of them.

Draco raised his wand and Hermione immediately smacked it down. "We're meant to be working as a team. That means we cast the spell together."

"Ever the teacher's pet. You know, I could cast this spell in seconds and we could be done with this farce."

"You think you're so superior, and you know, you really aren't!" Hermione whispered angrily, conscious of the need to attract yet more attention from Flitwick.

"Need I point to my Pureblood status yet again?" He hissed back at her and raised his wand again.

Incensed by his hackneyed reference to her parentage, Hermione pulled out her wand and the pair of them shouted the spell at the same time, sending sparks flashing off the desk, temporarily blinding them in a cloud of passionately red smoke. As the crimson tendrils cleared, a pair of furious brown eyes and a pair of cold grey eyes looked down towards the desk to see their previously plain green apple gleaming a glossy scarlet under the classroom lights. In unison, they turned to each other in anger: "What have you done?"

Flitwick was racing across the classroom as fast as his short legs could take him, irritably waving the remaining smoke out of his way. "What is the meaning of this?"

Hermione held up the apple and glared at her partner. "He's ruined the spell, conceited idiot that he is!"

"Me! If you had just let me cast the spell, none of that would have happened!"

Flitwick waved his wand and sent a crescendo of sparkling ashes across the room. "I will have no more of this! You did not perform the spell correctly and you failed to work as a team! So both of you fail this assignment!"

"But Professor…"

"No more Miss Granger! A fail!"

"Professor, there's nothing wrong with the apple, it was just Granger meddling." To prove his point, Draco picked up the apple and bit into it, swallowing quickly in his haste to prove that there was nothing wrong. He presented the apple to the teacher for his inspection, but the teacher just shook his head.

"You aren't hurrying to eat the rest of it. Therefore the charm did not work."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake. I hope you're happy, you idiot." Hermione snatched the apple from Draco's limp hand. "If you'd just let me do the spell, none of this would have happened." Absentmindedly, she twirled the apple around and bit from the opposite side that Draco had.

As soon as the bite that she had taken slid into her throat, the apple in her head flashed an even brighter red. Hermione looked at it, and then up at Draco, who had seen the blaze coming from her hands. "What did you do now Granger?"

"Nothing. Get away from me, ferret boy."

"Mature."

"If I'm so immature then why aren't you moving away from me?" She looked at him defiantly.

Draco opened his mouth to respond sharply, to tell her that she was clearly insane because he was no closer to her than he ever got: he was always anxious to keep his distance from a filthy Mudblood! But then he noticed that he was close enough to see the way that small lines were appearing as her eyebrows furrowed closer in fury at the way that he wasn't keeping away from her. In disgust at himself, he stepped away from her.

As he did so, Hermione felt an unknown compulsion: a desire to step closer to Draco Malfoy. Without thinking, she let her feet move her, the single step bringing her into closer proximity with her enemy than she thought she had ever been.

"Granger, back off." He spat, in a dull, warning tone.

"I am," she barked back, trying to gain some modicum of control.

As soon as she moved away, moving several steps now, trying to avoid the bizarre turn of events that threatened to engulf her, Draco stood still, tensing ever muscle in his body, anticipating the odd movement that would bring him closer to the girl he couldn't stand.

Nothing happened.

Slowly, he relaxed his muscles, watched warily by Hermione. Both of them knew that something odd was happening now.

Finally, his muscles were loose. As soon as he allowed himself to think that everything was back to normal, he had to yank his body straight back into its tension-filled pose: every part of his body apart from his brain was telling him to get as close to Granger as he possibly could. As he stood there, unwilling to give in to the urge, he saw exactly the same strain in Hermione's eyes: she was exerting the same pressure on her body as he was on his.

Suddenly, they understood, and both their eyes fell on the apple. In harmony, their voices rang out across the classroom. "PROFESSOR!"

Flitwick turned around and stared at his two errant students.

"The apple…"

"It's doing something…"

"We want to move closer…"

"To each other! Do something…"

"Please! I can't be close to Granger!"

Flitwick flapped his arms angrily for silence. The whole class watched as he examined the apple and listened to how his students had pronounced the spell. Crossing his arms, poking gingerly at the apple and watching as both students clutched onto desks to give themselves the strength to stay apart. "Neither of you pronounced it correctly."

Hermione's spine stiffened angrily, ready to protest but her teacher was already continuing. "I can only conclude that you have managed to pervert the course of the spell…"

"Pervert is the right word. This is Granger."

"Silence Mr Malfoy! The spell, rather than creating a compulsion to finish eating the fruit seems to have created a compulsion to get as close to the other spell caster as possible. Unfortunately, I cannot be sure. None of my students have ever been such imbeciles as to argue whilst performing such complicated charms."

Hermione's cheeks flushed bright red. "Professor, we're so sorry. What can we do?"

"I don't know Miss Granger."

Draco's eyes fell on the apple. Willing himself not to throw himself closer to Granger, he edged closer to the desk between us, and snatched up the apple and flung it to the floor. Its soft flesh smashed on the tile floor and he relaxed his body, thinking that the impulse to be closer to Granger would be gone. Immediately, his body propelled him through the air, until Hermione was standing at his shoulder, looking at him with revulsion. "What kind of a solution is that?"

For in front of their very eyes, the shattered apple was repairing itself and floating through the air, not resting until it sat on the table, replete in its lustrous perfection. The only flaws were the teeth marks left in it from their respective bites.

Hermione and Draco, their shoulders pressed together, looked coldly at each other, the panic beginning to show. "What do we do now?"

"I can offer no advice." Flitwick looked from one to the other. "I suggest waiting for the charm to break, as it inevitably must."

"But how long will that take?"

"Mr Malfoy, as I already explained, I do not know what charm you have managed to create here! I think you should just consider yourselves grateful that the charm does not induce stronger inclinations!"

Hermione's cheeks flushed even redder and Draco looked at her in contempt. "Granger, stay away from me."

"You're the one whose shoulder is pressed against mine…I'll repeat your words to me: _back off._" The venom with which she spoke enabled Draco to pull back enough to carry on walking away. "Malfoy, keep away from me, otherwise I will curse you into next week! I swear, this latest attempt to ruin my life will not work!"

"You think I did this on purpose?" He shouted, but with an immense effort, she was already walking away from him, refusing to look back because of the temptation that it might have engendered. "Dream on Granger; you should consider yourself lucky to have me drawn to you!"

But his protests were falling on the cold stone walls, rather than her ears, and he couldn't help feeling that he was the idiot in all of this. How was he meant to deal with a bodily attraction to a girl he hated?

_**AN: Hey everyone, welcome to another Dramione! I'm sorry it took me a little while to get this one up, I was worried it was slightly too similar to Unseen and Unexpected, but then I figured I did all the heavy stuff with Seven Deadly Sins and Back To Temptation, so why not do a bit more fluff? So I really hope you enjoy this story, and please please please review, because they make me so happy! Petitesorciere xxx**_


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione sat in the Gryffindor common room, her papers set out in front of her in neat regiments. To any passer by, she looked like her usual, hard-working self. But rather than focusing on her homework, she was listening to her body screaming to go and find Draco. She could even vaguely tell where he was: somewhere in the dungeons. And she was sure that if she went down to the dungeon, her body would be able to tell her precisely where to go from there to find the boy that she hated.

Harry and Ron pushed their way past a group of third years who were flicking a ball of paper around with their wands and sat opposite Hermione. "It's true?"

"You heard then?" She irritably tapped her quill against her ink bottle, wondering what she could do to make the constant ache cease.

"Everyone who was in your class has been talking about it," Harry said, looking at her through concerned eyes. "What happened?"

Hermione sighed: this bit almost hurt more than her body betraying her. "I got the spell wrong." As Ron opened his mouth to butt in with an incredulous joke, she continued over the top of him. "He did as well. We both cast the wrong spell at the same time, and somehow they turned into one spell. And then we both ate a bit of the apple and instead of wanting to eat the apple, we now want to be close to each other all the time." She paused. "I can't believe I just said 'we' and meant Malfoy and I. Eurgh."

"You want to be close to him?" Ron began fiddling with her piles of parchment and she slapped his hands off touchily.

"Yes. My body won't listen to my brain, which is telling it to stay the hell away from Malfoy. Right now, every muscle in my body is begging me to get up and go and find him."

"I bet he did this on purpose."

"Oh, come on Harry. He has absolutely nothing to gain from this. I just wish it would be over. Flitwick said that the charm would break eventually, but he doesn't know when."

"It could go on forever!" Ron exclaimed.

Hermione rolled her eyes and contemplated banging her head against the table. "Thanks for that Ron, that was exactly what I needed to hear."

"Sorry," he said, with the good grace to look slightly sheepish. "So what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to ignore my body and Malfoy. Simple as that." She told herself that it would be that simple, that she would make it that simple, and that was the end of the matter. But it was so difficult to be fighting against her body, which had always worked in harmony with her before. It was like Malfoy was a magnet, pulling her towards him like she was nothing more than a tiny piece of metal. "You know what? I'm going up to bed. Maybe it'll be easier to ignore my body if I get a bit further away from him."

Her two friends watched her go, but she knew that they would say nothing. What could they say that would solve this problem?

* * *

Draco was sitting on one of the green sofas in the dimly lit Slytherin common room, acolytes surrounding him adoringly. Pansy was sitting in the most sought after place; next to him with his arm draped around her shoulders. Draco was cursing Granger more than ever in his head. He was in his element: surrounded by girls, all interested in what he had to say, and a dozen people for him to sneer at, and yet every muscle in his body was telling him to twist away from Pansy and run up to the higher levels of the castle. Granger was somewhere up there and it was driving him mad.

"I bet she planned it," Pansy said, her face twisted with jealousy at the thought of having Draco compelled to run after her. "Why wouldn't she?"

"In case it had escaped your notice, all of the Gryffindors hate Draco. Granger wouldn't tie herself to him on purpose!" Another girl cut in over her, desperate to show Draco that she could be just as scathing as he could be. But it was a wasted effort, as the object of her lustful attention was just staring at the exit to the common room.

Pansy kissed his cheek and pinched his thigh, causing him to look around in irritation. "What?"

"Are you thinking about Granger?" she asked accusingly.

"Of course I'm thinking about Granger. Every part of my body is telling me to go and find her, it would be difficult not to think about her." He extricated himself from her grasp and stood up. "I'm going to bed."

"Oh, Draco, come on. Stay with me a bit longer." She patted the sofa next to her and smiled invitingly.

"No." He walked away and let himself into his dormitory, throwing himself onto his bed, already feeling the urge to run back out of the room and straight to Granger, wherever she was. It was the worst punishment he could ever have received for not following instructions in class: magically drawn to your worst enemy? Detention would have been a million times better.

Blaise Zabini followed after him, casting one longing look at the bevy of girls that Draco had left behind him, but deciding that the opportunity to rib his friend was too good to miss. "So, Granger, eh?"

Draco lay on his bed and pulled a pillow over his face. "That's what I said. About a million times. Pay attention Zabini."

"Touchy." Zabini slouched on his own bed. "It could be worse."

Draco tossed the pillow off his face and glared across the dormitory. "How could it possibly be worse? I am inextricably linked to _Hermione Granger_, with no knowledge of when this link will break. I am having to fight against my own body. I am thinking about _Granger_ when I have got all the Slytherin girls sitting around me waiting for my attention. How the hell could this be any worse?"

His friend paused and looked at the ceiling. "At least you don't want to sleep with her," he suggested. "At least your mind's still working properly, even if your body isn't."

"My body wants to get me closer to Granger. Who knows what it's going to do if I give in and get closer to her?" Draco asked morosely, pulling the pillow back over his head.

"You're screwed then. Not literally of course." Zabini stood up and stretched. "Well, you've left a group of girls sitting out there without anyone to bat their eyelashes at. I'm sure you won't mind if I…" And with that, he slid out of the room, leaving Draco grumbling on his own.

His body was twitching now, aching to go and find Granger. It was intolerable. There was no way that he could sleep with this much tension. Rubbing his eyes sleepily, he looked at the dormitory door and felt his body get ready to spring into action in grateful anticipation. Turning his head in the other direction, he swore and threw his pillow across the room. Maybe if he didn't go and find Granger but if he just went to the halfway point? Maybe that would relax his body, give him his dose of Granger. Wrinkling his face at the thought, he stood up and slid out of the dormitory, making his way across the common room and ignoring the cries of his friends.

He looked around in the corridor. No one was following him. Sighing in resignation, he began to make his way up through the dungeons. Third floor. That was where he would stop.

* * *

Hermione tossed and turned, causing Lavender to throw a pillow at her. "For Merlin's sake Hermione, some of us are trying to sleep!"

"I can't help it," Hermione spat. "I'm trying to sleep as well."

"It's only Malfoy, why don't you go and find him?" Parvati murmured irritably.

"Precisely because he's Malfoy." Hermione rearranged her pillows as far away from the door as she could manage without falling out of bed.

"I am warning you Hermione, do something to relieve whatever it is you're feeling, because I am about to do something that I would regret if I wasn't cranky and tired." Lavender growled.

Hermione sighed and sat up. "I could try and go a bit nearer to Malfoy. Maybe that'll help."

"I don't care. Just do it." Parvati's words were muted as she pulled her quilt over her head.

Hermione stood up and let herself out of the dormitory. Her body was thanking her with every step she took, and she had to force herself not to run. If she lost control now, there was no telling where she would end up.

As she let herself out through the portrait hole, she stopped to think. Her common room was on the seventh floor, Malfoy was in the dungeon. A halfway point would be the best thing. Any closer and…she shuddered to think of what would happen if Malfoy caught her lurking outside his common room. Third floor. That would suffice.

She made her way through the corridors, the ache in her body alleviating slightly as she passed down through the castle. Finally, she got as close as she dared to go and slumped down onto the floor, her muscles still begging her to carry on moving, but not paining her in the way they had been. Burying her head in her hands, she wondered what on earth had possessed her to be so stupid. She should have just let Draco cast the spell. Or she shouldn't have eaten the damn apple.

She froze, and looked down the dimly lit corridor. Footsteps were coming towards her. Standing up, she wondered if she should flee back to the common room, but then she noticed that the ache in her body was vanishing, although she was feeling a stronger urge to run in the direction of the footsteps: her muscles promising her that it was what she really wanted. She knew precisely who the shadowy figure coming towards her was, and she subsided back to the floor, sullen but unwilling to go back to a bed where she would get no sleep.

Draco was feeling exactly the same thing, and was wondering if he had misjudged the distance of the Gryffindor common room. Surely they couldn't be this close? He had always gotten the impression that they would be up somewhere high, persuading themselves that they were lording it over everyone else.

He was so caught up in his own thoughts, that it wasn't until he was nearly upon her that he noticed the small huddled figure at the side of the hall. She raised her face to glare at him, and he almost jumped out of his skin. "Merlin Granger, what the hell are you playing at?"

"I'm sitting in the hall, unable to sleep and cursing your stupidity."

"You're just a little ray of sunshine, all the time, aren't you?" He growled back, sitting at the other side of the hall. Despite their mutual hatred, there was no question of either of them leaving. They both knew what the other was feeling, and they knew that to leave would bring back the ache that was now reduced so much it was barely noticeable.

"When I can't sleep because I want to go and see _you_, I know that there's something seriously wrong! And I know that your idiocy is the reason that I'm feeling like this! So I'm cursing your stupidity much like it's cursed me!"

"Keep your voice down!" He hissed. "Much as this kills me to say it, I need you to stay here because otherwise my body is going to drive me mad. And if Filch comes and find us, we are going to get even more punishment."

She nodded and tipped her head back against the wall. "How long do you think this will last?"

"Do I look like a psychic Granger?"

"Doesn't matter if you were, I still wouldn't believe you."

"Then why bother asking me?" He wondered at his misfortune. He couldn't have ended up bound to the most beautiful, quiet girl in Hogwarts. No, he had to end up next to the one girl who never shut up. He glared at her, and noticed her pyjamas. "You wear pink pyjamas."

She looked down at herself and wanted to die, especially when she noticed that he was still dressed, just slightly dishevelled. "And?"

"It wasn't the sort of thing that I would picture you wearing."

"I hope to God that you never try and picture me in my pyjamas."

"I won't need to any more. Now I just know that you look all…fluffy."

Hermione lowered her head onto her knees and contemplated cursing him. It would shut him and his sneering smirk up. "My normal ones were in the wash."

"You don't need to explain yourself to me Granger. And don't try and ruin the illusion for me."

"Please be quiet. Please."

He tipped his head back against the wall and Hermione looked at him surreptitiously from under her eyelashes. He looked just as tired as she was from fighting against her body; purple shadows forming under his eyes. The pink of her pyjamas, now hideously offensive to her, kept catching her eye and she picked at the material covering her knee, feeling very self-conscious.

"Relax Granger and stop staring at me."

"What?" Surprise at being caught made her high pitched.

"You're looking at me, and you think you're being sneaky, which is almost worse. I'm a Slytherin: epitome of sneaky, remember? And stop picking at your knee. They're just pink pyjamas."

"Don't say it like that."

"Say what like what?"

"Pink pyjamas. You're…laughing while you say it."

"And you wouldn't, if you saw me in pink pyjamas?"

"You're still doing it!" She protested. "And of course I'd laugh if I'd seen you in pink pyjamas. It's not exactly the kind of clothing that I'd associate with you."

"Now you know precisely how I feel." He rolled his eyes. "Pleasant as this has been, do you think this will be enough to let us go back to our respective beds?"

"Hopefully." Hermione stood up and took a couple of steps away from him. She wasn't feeling like she wanted to smack his head against the wall, which made her hate him even more. Why wasn't he being his usual self? Why wasn't he hating her and judging her and mocking her? The pyjama thing didn't count – that was almost affectionate, in the most unsettling, hateful and odd way ever.

As they moved away from each other, Draco looked at her. "Granger."

She looked around, her face stony.

"This stays between us."

"You honestly think I'm going to tell people that I met you in a corridor in the middle of the night and stayed with you for more than thirty seconds? What's wrong with you?" She turned away and made her way up the corridor. Draco watched her depart, the pink of her top visible in the gloom. He shook his head, and resigned himself to the ache that was already growing in his body as he made his way back down to his common room.

_**AN: Hope you enjoyed, please review! xxx**_


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione stretched her arms above her head and opened her eyes. As soon as she did so, the familiar ache reasserted itself. She tried to draw her muscles back in on herself, trying to soothe them, but the ache just spread through her body. Sighing, she heaved herself out of bed and dressed herself, resisting the urge to throw herself out of the door semi-clothed.

It wasn't until she was in the hall, surrounded by laughing students that she felt the ache ease significantly. Knowing that she was only a matter of feet away from Draco allowed her to relax and involve herself in conversation: the longing subdued to the faintest desire. Sitting with her back to the Slytherin table, she told herself resolutely that this was all she needed to stop her body's urgings. Anything more would be overkill. She didn't rely on him, she told herself, she was using him to alleviate the constant pressure on her. It was highly unpleasant, hateful even, but a philosophical outlook was the only way to approach this. If she told herself that she relied on him, that she truly needed Malfoy, then she would go mad.

* * *

Draco watched Hermione's back, and saw in it the same tense alignment that he knew now characterised his own posture. It was the determined strength of someone who had an unwavering resolution not to give in to something that they knew would make them feel good. And simply because they thought that giving in would be morally impermissible. He curled his lip. Did she think that such behaviour would elevate her to some state above the rest of them?

He looked along the table at his housemates. Yes, few of them were quite as selfish as he was, but all of them made sure to keep their own interests at heart at every available opportunity. If they wanted something, they went out and they took it, not caring who they hurt in the process, even if it was one of their own. But then again, none of them had ever had to deal with Granger.

The entire situation had put him in the biggest quandary of his life. How was he meant to reconcile his own longing to satisfy his every urge with the fact that doing so would mean getting closer to a girl that he truly loathed, and in doing so alleviating her own suffering? It went against every instinct he had.

Buttering a slice of toast as though he was trying to scrape it to pieces, he wished he could tear apart the source of this suffering just as easily. Glaring at the people who surrounded him, unable to understand what he was going through, he wondered what he was meant to do. Yes, being in the same room as her made him feel much better, but the fact that he relied on her to do that made his skin crawl. She might be able to accept that she felt better in his glorious presence (surely most did), but he would not rely on her to do anything for him.

He watched as she stood up and swung her bag onto her shoulder, smiling at her friends and waving as she left. She clearly didn't focus enough attention on retaining her control over her own body, and her head snapped to one side, her eyes instantly seeking out his. As soon as their eyes met, he watched as she bit down on her lip and yanked her head away again. Draco narrowed his eyes and watched as she walked out of the hall as quickly as she could while maintaining some dignity.

Standing up, not bothering with any pleasantries to his housemates, he left the hall, striding past the first years who were in his way, he watched as she walked up the flight of stairs to her first class. Despite the fact that his class was in the opposite direction, he let his body take over momentarily, and follow her.

Hermione stood outside her class, puzzling at the fact that her body still wasn't screaming at her. Looking around, she saw Draco's shining blonde head standing at the other end of the corridor. Her eyes widened in horror, and she glanced back to see if anyone had noticed her staring. Her classmates were obliviously chatting amongst themselves and she took advantage of the situation to hurry back down the corridor and prod Draco's chest with a sharp finger. "What the hell do you think you're playing at? Following me here?"

Draco stared coldly at her. "I don't know why I did it. All I know is I hate you, and you're the only person who makes me feel vaguely normal again, because of the hideous perversion of the universe that seems to be taking place."

"Will you grow up?" She spat. "I am suffering through exactly the same thing as you but I am able to pull myself together long enough to function well enough in normal society. So why can't you do the same?"

"Because…"

" Because you're so _selfish_ that you can't be that normal! You're just thinking about yourself."

"Do you think I want people to see me talking to you?"

"I don't care about your snide little comments, I don't want you worming around on the periphery of my life! Pull yourself together, and leave me alone."

"I can't leave you alone." He hissed. "It kills me to admit it, but I cannot deal with this constant…discomfort."

"I can see why you weren't in Gryffindor…not brave enough to deal with more than twenty four hours of a little nagging."

"This is not nagging, this is my body fighting my brain and I refuse to put up with it." He breathed in deeply. "I have a proposition for you."

"I don't want to hear it," she answered, and began to turn away.

"I know you're stubborn Granger, but are you going to be so pigheaded that you rather exist in this state than to listen to the compromise that I'm offering? Hardly intelligent, is it?"

She turned back to him. "I will listen, so this had better be damn good."

He pulled her to one side of the corridor, glaring at the few people who dared to cast a glance at them. "One hour, every night. Before we go to bed. Just let our bodies be near to each other, and maybe that'll be enough to let us get through the rest of the day normally."

"What makes you so sure? You're hardly as clever as you think you are?"

"We were together for less than ten minutes last night, and it was enough to let us sleep. An hour should be sufficient for a day. If not, it's one hour and we never have to do it again. Alright?"

She met his snarl with her own. "Fine. Just…_fine_. Where are we meeting?"

"That room that you lot hid in from Professor Umbridge in Fifth Year. We need… a room where we won't be discovered. At 9 o'clock tonight."

Giving him one last searing glare, Hermione turned on her heel and walked away from him, feeling the pull in her centre as he stayed where he was.

* * *

Later that night, Hermione finished the last paces in front of the blank space of wall and watched as a door appeared in front of her. Pushing it open reluctantly, she stepped into the room.

She knew that he was in the room: as soon as she had walked anywhere near the room, she could feel his presence in there, brooding away at the situation that they were in.

She looked around, taking in the dark red drapes of the room and the flickering fire. "What the hell were you imagining?"

He was sitting on a sofa in front of the fire and answered her without deigning to turn his head. "I didn't specify this. I can only presume that other students who didn't want to be discovered wanted some sort of romantic hideaway, and the room has decided to use the same model again."

"Fantastic." She slumped into an armchair, closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. "Just fantastic. Stuck in a room, with you and a fire. And for the first time all day my body is actually happy."

"Shut up Granger."

Hermione looked at him and wondered whether she would prefer to rip his head off or just gouge his eyes out. Either was an attractive option. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the fire, watching it flickering away. Completely inconsistent and utterly hypnotizing.

Surreptitiously, Draco changed his line of vision, allowing him to watch the orange and yellow light flash over Hermione's face, the light catching in her eyes. She looked remarkably distant from the situation, her face calm and composed. "How can you stay so calm?" He asked.

"What?" Suddenly, all the calm was gone from her face, and her eyes were narrowed as she looked at him.

"Clearly you're more civil in the middle of the night. I asked, how can you stay so calm?"

"Because I'm a better person than you." She answered coldly. "I am able to see that being utterly vile is not going to resolve this situation, no matter how much I loathe you. So I have determined to put up with this as best I can. And that means tuning you out as much as I can."

They stared frostily at each other, each daring the other to look away first. Draco closed his eyes first. "I hate this. I can't stand you, and the idea that you make me feel even slightly better is horrific."

"And do you think that I feel any better about this situation Malfoy? You think I can stand you?"

"You should…"

"Consider myself lucky to have you in such close quarters? I don't think so Malfoy. In fact, I consider myself extremely unlucky. You're vile and pretentious, and in an ideal world I would have absolutely nothing to do with you."

Draco smiled sarcastically. "That sounded practised."

"That sounded stupidly egotistic." She smirked back at him.

He turned sullenly back to the fire and moved his shoulders back, letting his muscles relax. "How about it we just wait this hour out in silence?"

"You're the one who keeps talking." She closed her eyes again and let the firelight play off her face.

Draco looked at her, and saw for the first time the long lashes that lay against her cheek. They were unfeasibly long, and he hated her for it. They were too noticeable, almost cartoonish. They were too attractive for Granger.

She looked up and saw him looking at her, almost angrily. "What is your problem?" she snapped. "I'm not doing anything to you."

Draco glared at her. "I was just thinking Granger, that we might as well make the most of the forty five minutes that we've got left. Move closer."

"What?" She sat up straight, and he felt even that small movement release the tiniest bit of tension in the muscles in his back. "Are you so spoilt that you think I'm going to obey your commands?"

"Are you so stupid that you're not going to make the most of the few opportunities we've got to stop this feeling?"

"Not if it means being close to you!"

"Merlin, Granger! Pull yourself together. You think I'm going to jump you?"

"No, I'm worried about you polluting my airspace."

"Granger," he growled, reaching forward and grabbing her wrist. The contact threw her off balance: while her mind shrieked at her to get away from him, her body instantly moved forward, enthusiastically and beyond any control on the part of her mind. She ended up, sprawled on the sofa next to him, her cheeks flaming.

"What are you doing?" She shrieked through closed teeth. "You know what our bodies do, so why the hell would you make an actual contact between us?"

Draco just looked at her, her hair curled around her shoulders. At that moment, with her eyes wide in anger and her breath coming quickly and looking more attractive than he had ever seen her before, he had never hated her more. And yet his hand was still clamped around her wrist, his body refusing to let him let go.

"You're still holding onto my wrist," she stated calmly.

"I can't let go," he answered, just as evenly.

"Stop playing the idiot, and actually let go of me." She grasped at his hand, and felt her own hand lock around him. "What? No!"

"See Granger? Well, today has been informative. I've learnt that you're not nearly as clever as you like to think that you are. Because thanks to your idiocy, we are now entwined. Well done you!"

Hermione breathed in deeply. "Right. Right. What we're going to do, is to relax. Just…stay still, and be calm. And then our bodies will get their fix and they will allow us to let go."

Draco sat back, and Hermione fell with him. "A little warning would be nice," she hissed and struggled to rearrange herself. The position of their hands made it impossible to find any comfortable compromise until he was sitting back and she was resting her shoulder on his chest, their hands out in front of them.

The tactile nature of the relationship that was being forced upon them meant that both of them sat rigidly, staring fixedly in opposite directions. But soon the firelight and the warmth of the room began to seep into the minds and unconsciously, they relaxed, their bodies moulding closely together. Draco looked at his hands and knew that he would be able to let go of Hermione if he really focused. But one look at her profile, and the soft brown of her hair was enough to make him keep his mouth closed and his body pressed against hers.

**_AN: Hey everyone, sorry about the long delay. I had exams, and unfortunately they had to come first. But hey, here's the next chapter of this story, and for anyone who's reading Rifts and Romance, the next chapter of that should be up soon as well. I really hope you enjoyed this chapter, and all comments and reviews are enormously appreciated! Petitesorciere xxx_**


	4. Chapter 4

Hermione and Draco were in Flitwick's class once again. However, instead of sitting at opposite ends of the classroom, they were sitting at one of the desks, blissfully aware of how close the other was. Charms class was one of the few times in public that they felt they could be seen with each other. As all of their classmates had seen first hand the effects of the spell, there was no need for Hermione to swear that she was only doing it so that she could concentrate on the class and for Draco to sneer that the last thing he truly wanted was to be anywhere near Granger. They had the grudging sympathy of their peers, and could spend the few hours letting their bodies relax.

Of course, they still imposed strict boundaries on themselves. Hermione kept a close eye on her arm, watching to make sure that it didn't edge closer and closer to Draco's. The first time that she had taken her gaze off it, she had ended up with her forearm sandwiched to his, causing dirty looks and a lot of hissed swearing. Draco in turn kept his leg tensed at all times, anxious to stop it pressing up against Hermione's thigh. Aware of what his body would conspire to do if left to its own devices, he hadn't slipped yet, but had had some dangerously close jerks to contend with.

As they both wrote, their hands moving frantically across parchment, Draco's elbow jogged Hermione's, sending a splash of ink across the page. Her head snapped around and she glared at him. "What's your problem?"

"Don't get your boring little knickers in a twist," he hissed. "It was an accident."

"Boring little…? Oh for Merlin's sake." She turned back to her page and carried on writing. It frustrated her so much that she would spend the day bitching about him and arguing with him and then would have to go and spend time with him this evening, just to make sure that she could sleep. To rely on Malfoy for anything was more than she could stand. It was scant comfort that he was in exactly the same position.

Draco stopped writing and looked blankly at Flitwick. The teacher had assured him that the spell would wear off eventually and that they could go back to their previous animosity, but that didn't really help Draco in the present moment. And he was very much about the instant gratification. The thought that he might spend the next twenty years yearning to spend time with Hermione Granger was enough to make him feel vaguely nauseated. More so because of how his mind now seemed to be conspiring with his body against him.

Logically, he knew that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with Hermione. And yet, when they were sitting quietly in the Room of Requirements, the pulling of their bodies reduced to a gentle tug, it was hard not to feel some begrudging form of affection towards her. It was nothing, he told himself repeatedly. It was simply that he was associating her with the most relaxing part of his day. But she looked so peaceful when she was quiet, so…pretty. He shuddered to think that he was applying that word to Hermione.

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. He had decided that he was going to deny that peculiar feeling, and deny it he would.

Especially as he had no idea about whether or not Hermione was getting the same peculiar urges.

If she was…well…

No! He glared at her again, and wondered when the curse would finally break. He was going to lose his mind if this carried on much longer.

Hermione saw Draco glaring at her yet again out of the corner of her eye, and heaved out a sigh. What was his problem this time? He seemed determined to complicate every single new obstacle as much as he possibly could. Why couldn't he just face this with some form of stoicism and wait for the spell to break? Yes, she got more and more impatient every day. Yes, she hated having to spend her evenings with him, to the extent that she was just closing her eyes to tune him out. Yes, she hated having to put up with the pitying looks from other Gryffindors. Yes, she hated the evil stares from the Slytherins, as though she had done this on purpose. But she was putting up with it.

It was the glares from the Slytherin girls that irritated her the most. It was as though they thought that she was trying to entrap Draco. As though she thought that by forcing him to spend time with her he would fall madly in love with her. It was an insult to her integrity and to her taste in men. She simply couldn't understand the fuss over Malfoy. He was tall and blond. That was it. Anyone that she liked had to have much more going for them than being tall and blond.

Her ideal man had to be smart. Malfoy clearly wasn't, he was the reason that they were in this predicament.

He had to be brave. Malfoy obviously wasn't, he was whinging like a toddler about the whole situation.

He had to be funny. The only time Malfoy thought that he was being funny was when he was mocking a less fortunate student. That wasn't funny, that was cruel.

Sighing again, she pulled out a new sheet of parchment. A surprising thought appeared in her head as she scribbled down what was written on the board. Maybe it was just a matter of interpretation. Could all those Slytherin girls be wrong? Maybe Draco was smart, brave and funny, and he just seemed completely different to her because she was always experiencing him from the side he showed to any non-Slytherins. It was true that when they were sitting together in the Room of Requirements, she didn't feel like she had to be angry. It was almost like there was some sort of unspoken camaraderie between them.

Shaking her head slightly, angry with herself, she pressed her quill harder into the parchment. There was no camaraderie. It was an unspoken agreement that they would try not to irritate each other because they both had this unwelcome reliance on the other. And she was not helping matters by over-romanticising the situation. A camaraderie indeed!

The class ended, and in the bustle of students rushing for the door, Draco turned to Hermione. "Tonight in the usual place?"

"I've been there for the past week," she hissed. "What makes you think I'm not going to turn up tonight?"

Turning away from him, she rushed out of the door, wincing slightly at the pull of her body. Draco watched her go, and felt the bizarre urge to smile. Not to smirk, but to actually smile. She was so…dependable. And it wasn't in a boring way because there was no way that she wanted to be in a position where he was relying on her, and she was fighting it all the way. But the way that she was still sticking to her obligations was almost endearing. Almost.

* * *

Later that night, Draco walked into the Room of Requirements to see Hermione already sitting on the sofa in front of the fire. Her eyes had been closed but she turned around sharply as soon as she heard his footsteps. "Hi."

He didn't bother returning the greeting, choosing instead to just slump into the seat next to her, feeling his muscles release their tension with her proximity. Casting a sly glance at her, he saw her ridiculous eyelashes and experienced the swift burst of the peculiar cross between anger and yearning that he felt whenever he looked at her properly. Anger, he told himself, anger is all that it is.

"Any particular reason that you're looking at me?" she asked coolly.

"You saw that?" he asked, the words slipping out of his mouth before he could censor them.

"I suppose spending time around a Slytherin means that your capacity for noticing when _anyone_ is looking at you is wearing off on me."

"What do you mean when anyone is looking at me?"

"Malfoy, I'm 100 per cent sure that you are aware precisely how many people are watching you at any given time."

"What makes you think that?" He asked carefully, not wanting to give away more than he already had. Especially as she seemed remarkably insightful.

Hermione turned to him and looked appraisingly at him. Pausing for a minute, she opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and then spoke. "Because you're constantly projecting an image. And you need to make sure that people are picking up on that image and admiring it."

Immediately turning back to stare at the fire, she pretended that what had just happened had nothing to do with her. What on earth had possessed her to tell Draco precisely what she thought of him? Of course she had spent some time thinking about him: it was hard not to when her body spent every waking minute aching for him. But to say what she had just said made her sound like some sort of crazy stalker attempting amateur psychoanalysis.

Draco looked at her, her face calm and smooth. "And what makes you think that?"

"I don't think it, I know it," she answered, her voice still cool as she willed herself not to let a single tremble pass into her speech. It was so easy to think these things in the privacy of her own mind, but once she was actually saying them it was a completely different matter. The way that she could see him looking at her; with a burning intensity that had absolutely no place in a school was unnerving her more than anything ever had in her life. Despite the lack of tension in her body, she could feel a kind of electricity rippling through her veins, making her every sense more acute. If anyone had touched her at that point, she would have screamed.

"You know it? Really Granger, how have you come to such insightful conclusions?" She could hear the familiar sneer in his voice now, and it was almost reassuring to hear something that she loathed so very much. But still that electricity was undulating through her, and she knew that the force in his gaze hadn't died down at all. And that gave her the confidence that she needed: she might be feeling like this but she had definitely said something that had cut to his core, and that told her that she had been right.

Gathering all of her poise, she turned back to him, and gave him her best sarcastic smile. "You seem to be forgetting that I am extremely intelligent. Sorry if I intimidated you, I sometimes forget that the little people have difficulty making intuitive leaps."

Draco looked at her, mildly nonplussed. Had Hermione Granger actually just made fun of him? And not in a way that took the moral high ground, but that was actually just a plain old jibe. He stared at her, unable to quite remove his eyes from the chocolate brown irises that were meeting his gaze evenly. But then, as the curtain of black fringing swept down over her eyes, leaving her looking demurely down, the balance of power shifted back in his favour. She was definitely nervous, just masking it well. He could smell anxiety, it was how he preyed on the younger students!

"Granger, you are absolutely terrified." He said calmly.

"What?" The speed with which her look sped back up to meet his and the pitch of her voice left him in absolutely no doubt that he had been completely right.

"You're really worried what analysis I'm going to throw back at you. Well, I can tell you Granger, that you are so obsessed with being right all the time that you aren't even taking a second to admit that you might have done something wrong. And because you can't admit that, you are focusing all your attention on trying to deal with this situation better than I am."

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," she answered, praying that he would stop there, because if he continued any further he was going to stumble on her precise feelings.

"You, Hermione Granger, are hating this just as much as I am, and you are longing to be just as much of a brat as I am being. But you let yourself get stuck in the role of the dependable stoic years ago, and now you don't feel that you can get out of it. I'm intrigued Granger, just how much would you actually put up with just to live up to other people's expectations? Because you can tell me that I'm projecting an image, but you're guilty of precisely the same crime."

She looked at him, but her scathing tongue was gone now. All she could think was that maybe Draco Malfoy was more intelligent than she had ever given him credit for. And she knew that she was staring at him too much, that she wasn't looking like an bright young witch any more but like a gormless idiot, and yet she couldn't quite avert her gaze.

Draco carried on looking at her, and raised his eyebrows triumphantly. "What, no witty comeback? I'm disappointed Granger."

"Why?" She managed to say, forcing her tongue to speak clearly.

"Because you led me to believe that you were actually intelligent and I was actually looking forward to some sort of repartee to make this interminable hour slightly more enjoyable. I can see that I'm clearly far too intimidating for you to play at my level."

"You don't intimidate me," she squeaked incredulously. "You just come out with such stupid things that I can't think of anything to say back to them."

"Really? Come on Granger, I've seen you lending out your essays to your pathetic friends. Do you really want to be doing that? I'm sure you don't, and yet there you are, acting like an encyclopaedia. Simply because you let yourself get hedged into that role when you were a first year, and now you're too keen to keep everyone liking you so you won't tell them to piss off and do their own work. Whereas I, no matter how despicable you think I am, have kept everyone guessing so much that they never know where they stand with me. I'm never going to be forced into doing anything."

"I'm not forced…" she began to argue, but Draco just held up a hand imperiously and carried on talking.

"And as for you not being intimidated by me…Granger, you're all but trembling like a terrified virgin in a novel."

Instantly, a blush spread to her cheeks. How was he able to say things like that so steadily, as though to toss out comparisons like that cost him nothing? "I'm not intimidated by you," she said, her nails digging hard into the palms of her hands.

Draco's mouth spread into a smile. "Bollocks you aren't."

"I'm not," she insisted. She was so intent on keeping her equilibrium that she didn't even notice when Draco's hand shot out with unerring accuracy and seized her own clenched fist. She jerked at the touch of his warm skin on hers.

As he gently pried her fingers away from her palm, her head was spinning. What was he doing? And why was his skin warm? In her head, she had associated him with a snake for seven years; his skin should be as cold as a reptile's. But the warm fingers that were gently smoothing her fingers back had nothing in common with the aloof slither of a serpent. And that touch : it was too gentle for Draco!

Draco watched as Hermione's hand fell open, displaying the pink crescents that her nails had dug into her skin. He could feel a lump in his throat and had to swallow quickly, trying to maintain his dominance. He had no idea what he was doing. His initial thought had been solely to expose the tension that he knew she was trying to disguise. But now that the soft little hand was lying exposed in his, he could feel his control slipping away. Without thinking, he ran his index finger across each half-moon and saw her fingers twitch involuntarily.

Swallowing again, he looked up, and managed to choke out the words. "And you're not intimidated?"

She was past the point of being able to speak but wasn't ready to relinquish the fight. She shook her head quickly and watched as his pupils dilated, diminishing the silver grey that surrounded them. That peculiar rippling intensified, waving through her, and it was all she could do not to wriggle in her seat. Her breathing was shuddering now. She had absolutely no idea what was going on, but was already aware that she had no immediate plans to halt it. She just decided that she would attribute it to the charm of the fruit when the tension between them had evaporated.

Draco watched as his hand moved, completely independently of any thought of his, up through the air, towards Hermione's face. He was still tracing her palm with one of his fingers, and he could feel her quivering slightly now. As his hand gently touched her cheek, they both jumped, shocked at the contact between them.

Her skin was soft beneath his fingers, almost like velvet. He ran his thumb across her cheekbone, caressing the blush that still lingered there, and watched as she blinked again, her eyelashes brushing her cheek. She had a few freckles on her nose, he could see, and he suddenly felt the urge to kiss each and every one of them.

Moving his hand back, he slid it into the mass of hair that was tucked neatly behind her ears. Entwining his fingers in it, his palm resting against the smooth skin of her neck, he watched as he drew her inexorably closer to him. Her hand was resting on his chest now, as though she was unsure about whether to push him away or drag him closer. He could see his own panic and desire mirrored in her eyes, and knew that there was no way that they could pull away now.

Just as that thought occurred to him, Hermione's hand clenched around his shirt, balling the material as she pulled him closer towards her. The pulsating feeling in her had reached breaking point and she knew that she had to have his lips on hers or she would just explode, knew that she had to feel him dragging her as close to him as was humanely possible or she would never feel alive again.

The few seconds that it took for their lips to meet seemed agonisingly long. They were almost paralysed by the knowledge of what they were about to do. This wasn't some desire born out of teenage boredom or even of a spell, they were sure, this was a step that once taken could not be retreated from. The enormity of the situation was terrifying, but exhilarating.

In the instant that Draco's lips pressed up against hers, Hermione thought she was going to pass out. The strength behind it almost bruised her lips, and she knew that she was guilty of exerting the exact same amount of passion. Their mouths moved against each other in a dance that had never been practised and yet had never been more perfect. As her lips kissed his bottom lip, Draco could taste the sweetness of her breath washing through his mouth, the most intriguing taste that he had ever experienced and something that he knew he couldn't go without again.

Pressed up against each other, legs and arms entwined, it was a feeling of bliss that neither of them had ever had before. There was no question of either of them pushing anymore boundaries, they were scared enough by what they had already managed to accomplish, and elated enough to revel in these moments. It wasn't until the fire burnt out, plunging them into a plush darkness that they were able to pull themselves apart. Not saying a word, for what could they possibly say after something like that, they separated, their lips burning as they made their way back to their respective beds, to frustrated dreams of warm lips and impassioned caresses.

_**AN: Ok, so that took slightly longer than expected…sorry everyone. However, it is the longest chapter so far, and I am very proud of this chapter. I got into the flow so I am now actually going to have about six hours sleep before I get up for my longest day of the week…dedication or what? Please please please review, and I should probably say that a lot of this chapter has been inspired by the geniuses that are the Kings of Leon. Anyway…lots of love…petitesorciere xxx**_


	5. Chapter 5

Even when Hermione's eyes were open, she could still see flashing images of last night. Even when the only thing against her skin was her nightdress, she could feel Draco's warm weight pressing against her. Even when it was just her hands brushing through her hair to pull it back into a neat ponytail, she was shivering at the memory of Draco's hands curling into the soft tendrils.

Standing in front of the mirror, she wondered precisely how she was going to be able to face her friends. Surely they would be able to tell the difference between the Hermione they had known last night and the one who was coming to them this morning after spending hours entwined with the Slytherin that they hated the most? Her eyes were wider and sparkling and for some reason she couldn't help smiling at random intervals. Rolling her eyes, she decided that she would hate herself when she had finished hating Draco for making her not loathe him.

Running down the moving staircases, she told herself firmly what she had told herself in that mad instant before their lips had met: that this was to be chalked up to the force of the curse that they had inadvertently cast on themselves. There was no way that an attraction had developed between them, because that would be self-destructive, embarrassing and incredibly weird. She debated with adding horrible to the list but decided that the hours she had spent in Draco's arms were enough proof that she had enjoyed what had happened. That didn't matter, she decided, she could enjoy something but still decide that it was never to happen again. It was a mistake, but not one that I had any control over, she told herself repeatedly as she made her way to her usual place at the Gryffindor table. But even as she was telling herself, she couldn't help feeling that it was a very muddled explanation of what she had been feeling last night that did nothing to justify her behaviour this morning.

Sitting down, she smiled at her friends, then smiled at the thought that no one seemed to have noticed the difference in her demeanour. Then, forgetting herself, she smiled even wider as she remembered the taste of Draco's lips. Catching herself, she immediately dropped her gaze and stared at her toast. But she couldn't quite wipe the smile off her face.

While Hermione looked fixedly at the clumps of marmalade on her toast, Draco looked coolly across the hall at her, ignoring his housemates. As he had explained to Hermione the previous night, he behaved so unpredictably that there was little danger of anyone asking him what he thought he was doing if they did happen to notice where he was looking. If they dared to look at him long enough to ascertain precisely what was holding his attention so firmly.

He had felt her come into the room just seconds ago, and it had taken all his effort to stop his head whipping around far too abruptly. Forcing himself to stay calm, he had enjoyed the release of tension in his body that came from her relative closeness and then allowed himself to look when he knew that she would be sitting. From where he was sitting, he could see the smile that he knew meant a dimple appeared on the right hand side of her mouth. Taking a sip from his glass, he reflected on what had happened last night. Unlike Hermione, he was reluctant to say that what had happened last night was due to the power of a spell. Draco had so much confidence in his own strength of will that he half-believed even the Avada Kedavra wouldn't affect him. There was no way some spell that he and Hermione had managed to botch would leave him so utterly subjugated to his basest urges and desires.

So he was trying to give himself some ulterior motives for his actions last night, but nothing seemed to be holding water so far. He had contemplated saying that he was doing it to trick Granger into a false sense of security but as he had no desire to then throw her off balance, that seemed like a lie which would require a lot of effort to maintain for very little pay off. He had also thought about telling himself that he was doing this to see how easy it would be to get Granger doing what he wanted her to do. But the fact of the matter was that he knew that endeavour would be doomed to failure: Hermione was far too stubborn to even think about giving in to anything that he wanted her to do, simply on the sheer principle of the matter.

Which left him simply with two options. One, that the spell had in fact caused him to kiss Granger, or two, that he had wanted to kiss Hermione. As he watched her smile at Potter, he thought that it was entirely feasible that he had in fact just wanted to kiss her. She had a charm that wasn't common, especially not among the Slytherin girls. Despite being one of the most prickly and self-righteous know-it-alls that he had ever met, there was no question of her ever scheming her way through a relationship in order to improve her social standing or in order to revenge herself on someone. That was it, he decided! He was kissing Granger (and kissing her thoroughly and enjoying it) because she was so different to what he had known in the past! He was attracted to the unknown, always had been. So that was all it was with Granger. Once he knew her, he would be bored of her, then the spell would end and he would be able to return to his simple loathing of her, with simply a vaguely pleasant memory. And yet, even as he was thinking this through, he couldn't help feeling that it was a very muddled justification of the complex emotions that he was actually feeling.

He watched as Hermione left the hall, ahead of her friends again. Standing up without a word to anyone else, he left the hall as well, keeping a close enough distance so that no more tension would build up in her body. Watching as her ponytail swung confidently in her time with her pace, he felt his mouth dry involuntarily at the sight of the vulnerable white skin of the nape of her neck.

Hermione closed her eyes as she walked, knowing that Draco was behind her. He didn't honestly think that he was being inconspicuous, did he? If he wasn't feeling the tension grow, then neither was she!

She let her pace grow slower and slower, and felt the tensions between them lessen as he grew closer. Spinning around, she looked straight into his eyes and felt an entirely different tension overwhelm her. Straightening her shoulders, she summoned the haughtiest expression she could manage. "What do you think you're doing?"

He let his lips quirk in that smirk that Hermione knew did not bode particularly well for her. "I would have thought that it was blatantly obvious what I'm doing Granger. I'm following you."

"You know, in most jurisdictions, stalking is a criminal offence," she hissed, looking around to check that the corridor was still empty.

"There's a difference between stalking and a healthy amount of attention." Draco watched as she looked around impatiently, and felt a desire to move closer to her that was completely unmotivated by any spell cast on him. Drawing in a breath that was at a risk of becoming slightly ragged, he continued. "Now, after something like last night, I would consider that the signals you have been giving me would allow any court to classify this particular incident as a healthy amount of attention."

"Last night was a very big mistake!" Her eyes were fierce as she glared at him.

"Then why are you getting so irritated by the memory of it?" he asked smugly.

"You know I don't like making mistakes." She said, trying to regain her composure. "Last night was just the spell trying to force us a little closer and we made the _mistake_ of letting our guards down enough to let it compel us to behave…rather out of character."

Hermione watched as Draco stepped a little closer and felt the slight pull of her muscles being exchanged for an altogether different, much stronger pull that seemed to swell through her. She hated the fact that she had to look up to meet his insolent stare, she hated the fact that she could smell the aftershave he wore, she hated the fact that she was enjoying his proximity and she hated the fact that her brain was pushing her to throw herself at him and cling more tightly than she ever had before.

Draco watched as her deep-set abhorrence tried to manifest itself with some conviction. He knew that she wouldn't be able to resist for much longer, not if she was feeling anything like what he was feeling. But still, there was that small level of uncertainty which teased him. He was still confident, cocky almost, but it was impossible for him to get his usual guarantee that his kiss would be welcomed. That thrilled him almost more than her closeness did. Almost.

Before either of them was able to gather any rational thoughts, their lips had met. Hermione felt the cold of the wall press up against her back, Draco's hands clutching at her hair, pulling her face closer to his as his tongue flicked across her lower lip. The rippling desire in her flamed to a point that threatened to overwhelm her and completely independently of her brain, her hands crept around his back and hugged him closer, pressing their bodies close together.

The ferocity of the kiss had come out of nowhere, leaving the banter of a few seconds ago far behind them. Now their thoughts were focused on feasting on each other, rather than trying to achieve a semantical victory. And it scared Hermione. How was she meant to tell herself that this was nothing but a simple mistake brought on by a spell when the intensity of what she was feeling went beyond anything that she had ever experienced before?

Moving her hands back around to Draco's chest, she shoved angrily at him, forcing him away from her. Instantly, she felt cold and had to pull herself back from reaching for him again. Draco looked at her with confused, lusting eyes and made to step forward again, desperate to kiss her again.

"Get away from me," she said, as crossly as she could manage in a quiet voice. "We are _not_ going to do this. You are not going to do this. Leave me alone."

And with that, she pushed past him and strode up the corridor as fast as she could.

Draco ran after her, hating himself for taking steps closer to someone who had just rejected him. "Why?"

"Because we hate each other! Have you forgotten that fundamental fact? We are just waiting for this spell to end, that is the only reason that we are spending ANY time together! So we are not going to start kissing each other at every available opportunity because it is (a) pointless and (b) utterly wrong." She shook him away from her and dove into her classroom.

Draco stood in the corridor, staring at the door that she had just slammed. "Kissing like that is never pointless," he muttered and began wandering away from the door.

* * *

Later that night, Hermione stared at her reflection in her mirror once again. She didn't know what she was planning on doing. She had spent the past fifteen minutes brushing her hair, leaving it as smooth as possible, as though she was expecting it to be stroked. But she wasn't, she told herself. She wasn't going to see Draco, so her hair wasn't going to be stroked, so she was wasting her time.

Bashing her brush down onto the dressing table, she looked at her watch. She was only five minutes late. It was still feasible that she could go and spend time in the Room of Requirements. Not because she wanted to see Draco. Because she _needed_ to! Otherwise she wouldn't be able to sleep for tossing and turning. Although…she thought for a minute that the tension in her body wasn't unbearable. But it would be, it would be unless she saw Draco, her mind shrieked at her.

That was enough. Standing up, she ran down her dormitory stairs and towards the portrait hole.

"Where are you going Hermione?" Ron called.

She whipped around, cast a vaguely panicked look around, and wondered what she was meant to say. Then it dawned on her – the library! That was where she went all the time. "The library," she answered and was gone before any of her friends could point out that she didn't have any books with her.

Running through the corridors, praying that he wouldn't be gone, and hating herself for doing so, but not willing to stop. Finally, she arrived at the Room and paced back and forth in front of it. Bursting into the room, she met Draco's cool gaze. "Sorry I'm late."

"10 minutes. You really had me panicking Granger."

"Given that you feel the need to follow me if I leave the dining hall, I'm surprised you haven't been hammering down the door to my common room." She smirked at him and slumped into the seat furthest away from him that she could, her heart racing with the adrenalin of seeing him again.

"Hermione," he crooned, and every nerve in her body flipped back and forth. "We've been through this. Why sit so far apart when we only have a couple of hours a day to be truly close?"

"Is that your idea of seduction?" Hermione snarled, and pressed her spine close to the back of her chair.

"Stop projecting your desires onto me." His eyes were supercilious and laughing.

"You think you know what I desire? Don't make me laugh." She said each word slowly and deliberately, and then froze as she saw him stand up and prowl towards her.

"I know precisely what you want, and I don't hear anyone laughing," he murmured, now dangerously close to her. Unhurriedly, he knelt down at the side of her chair, his face on a level with hers. He could see the tension in her cheek, as she sought to focus her eyes anywhere away from him.

"What do you think you're doing?" she whispered.

"You need to learn how much fun it can be to make mistakes," his lips were brushing against her ear as he spoke, sending little ripples down the nape of her neck and into her spine.

"I don't need to learn any lessons that you've got to teach." She jerked her face away from his lips. "I don't want to make the same mistake twice."

"I'm not a mistake, I'm a compulsion." His warm, smooth fingers reached out and gently smoothed the taut muscles of her cheek. She tossed her head, trying to move away from him but only succeeding in tangling his fingers in her hair.

"Draco, please…"she breathed, unsure of what she was actually asking him to do, whether she wanted him to move away from her or whether his intoxicating presence should just suck her in more.

"Hermione," he pulled away a little, enough to look her squarely in the eye. "You've got to decide what you want."

Her eyes were wide, and he could hear her gently laboured breathing as she tried to retain her control.

"Stop trying to be in control, it doesn't suit you. Gryffindors should be brave enough to know when they're beaten and accept the consequences."

She raised her chin proudly and Draco saw the angry flash in her eyes that nearly undid him. "There is no way that _you _have beaten _me_."

His finger roamed along her jaw line. "So why aren't you flicking my hand off angrily and storming away with your virtue still intact?"

"I don't know." She murmured, unable to quite string together a coherent argument with the soft strokes that were tingling along her skin.

"But then, Granger, who's saying that you haven't got me beaten too? In a situation as…exceptional as this, I would accept some sort of truce."

In a move that threw him completely off his stride, cutting abruptly into his fantasies of asserting some kind of control over the situation, Hermione Granger spun out of her chair and pushed him to the floor, her knees either side of his chest.

Looking down at his face, that was now smirking devilishly up at her, Hermione felt her heart pick up its pace, the amount of adrenaline running through her body almost unbearable. She had acted instinctively and there was no question of her backing out now. But what was she meant to do? Pummelling that satisfied face seemed particularly appealing at that precise moment.

"There is no way that you have beaten me, and no way that this is a truce. You are a mistake, and you are going to stay one. I will not let you intrude into my life," she hissed.

"Really?" His crooked smile looked up at her, and then she was taken off guard as he sat up and locked his arms around her, pinioning them together. Their faces were just centimetres apart. "Some mistakes are the best things that ever happen to people."

"I have no idea how you are able to classify yourself as one of the best things that could ever happen to me."

"Easy," he muttered, and then he was bridging that final gap, and his lips were kissing her lower lip, gently biting at it, and she was lost. She couldn't have pulled away even if she wanted to, and her hands knotted into his hair and pulled him closer so that she could slip her tongue into his mouth, and taste the boy that intoxicated her and infuriated her in equal measures.

As they kissed each other, momentarily free from their constant fighting, each allowed themselves a brief moment to think that they were the ones in control before succumbing to the pull that they were still reluctant to contribute to any sort of genuine desire.

_**AN: Oops…this update took way longer than I had expected. I had a couple of essays, and then things happened, and I had a half written chapter on my computer for weeks. Finally got around to finishing it though, and I really hope it was worth the wait. All reviews are incredibly appreciated. However, I have a favour to ask. If any of you haven't read the other story that I'm writing, Rifts and Romance, I would love it if I could get some feedback on it. It's a next generation, so there isn't a huge fanbase, but I would absolutely adore some feedback on it. Thanks guys, and again, sorry about the delay! Petitesorciere xxx**_


	6. Chapter 6

Hermione woke up and wondered why she was lying on plush carpet rather than her bed. Tipping her head to one side, narrowing her eyes against the morning light that was coming in through an unexplained window, she stretched out her arms and thought that something seemed unusual.

What was it, she pondered? Obviously, there was the fact that she was lying on carpet rather than cool sheets. But it was something else. As her sleepy brain began to function properly, she realised what it was. It wasn't that she felt unusual, it was the fact that she felt normal! After weeks of having her body perpetually tugging her in strange ways, to be waking up content was absolutely blissful. But why was she ok? Sitting up suddenly, she smiled to herself. The charm had finally broken!

"Well that was far too abrupt for my liking Granger." An acerbic drawl cut into her happiness.

Hermione whipped her head round and saw Draco lying behind her on the carpet, just inches away from her. "Oh…damnit!" she growled. "I thought the charm had broken."

"Now, why would you want the charm to break? After last night, I was under the impression that you were rather enjoying the charm. You certainly didn't make any protests." His eyes travelled past her cheeks, across her lips and down her neck.

Hermione glanced down and saw a dangerous amount of buttons undone on her shirt. Well, it was dangerous for her. Just mildly risqué on anyone else. "You have absolutely no shame."

"And that goes double for you." Draco stretched his arms above his head and Hermione snapped her head away as she saw the hem of his shirt rise above his belt, exposing a lean, pale stomach.

She stood up and began smoothing her clothing down. "I refuse to believe that you can even begin to think that I have less shame than you."

"Any girl who willingly straddles and kisses a man like her life depends on it, and who whimpers whenever his lips are moved away from hers, is not a little prude. Certainly not the type of prude that you seem so keen to portray yourself as."

"I'm not a prude! I just don't kiss random boys. And incidentally, you aren't a man, you're an immature…"

But before she could turn around and complete her lecture, Draco had jumped up and was already filling in the words. "I'm an immature little boy who has no idea how easy his life has been and has never had to work for anything. I don't really care about what you think of me Granger. I'm just interested in why, in the cold light of day, you're so eager to deny something that you beg for by firelight."

Hermione looked at his cold face and wondered precisely what it was that compelled her to kiss him. She could deal with the charm. At that precise moment, she felt the need to press her body along the length of his, but she knew she could control that. She could resist him, easily, despite the discomfort. What was it that changed, so slowly and imperceptibly at night that meant she flew into his arms at the slightest provocation?

"You just going to blame it on the charm Granger?" he asked, his eyes watching the emotions scudding across her face like clouds. "That would be the easy way out."

"It's the way that makes sense," she shouted, her temper flaring up. "I don't like you, you have made it perfectly clear that you hate me, and yet we keep ending up kissing! So there must be some explanation, and the one that seems most logical and is widely accepted by the entire school, is that we are under the influence of a charm! And in fact, it doesn't even need to be accepted by the whole school! I was there, and I saw you being your usual conceited self and destroying what would have been a perfectly good charm if I cast it, and now we're in this position and I'm having to try and justify kissing the boy that I hate most in this school!"

"That is your precise problem!" Draco's cold arrogance dissipated in frustration. "Why do you have to analyse everything? Why can't you just accept that you feel like this?"

"You're a fine one to talk! You analyse everything that happens to you, and what everyone's worth is, what they can do without you!

"And look how satisfied I am! Analysing is all well and good if you can work it to your advantage, but Granger, you clearly can't do it."

"I can analyse you down to your cold roots," Hermione spat.

"Oh please. All you're going to do is tell me that I'm not happy and I never will be, and all this treating people like scum is a mask to hide how unhappy I was, and how I must have had a hideously tragic childhood, and all I want is my father's approval."

Hermione fell back slightly and tried to keep her face blank. It was precisely what she had been about to say.

He smirked at her silence. "Well, I hate to break it to you, but I am very happy, and plan to stay so, I enjoy treating people the way I do, I had a pleasant childhood and feel no pressing need for any further approval from my father."

"You always have to have an answer for everything, don't you?" she snapped, and slid her shoes on, intending to leave while she still had a shred of dignity left.

"And you always have an excuse to run away from an argument that you can't win." Draco slouched back into his chair. "Go on Granger, run away. I know you'll be back here tonight, pretending you don't want me to kiss you."

His cool dismissal stung more than any of his overly-accurate summaries on her personality, and her cheeks flaming, she fled back to the Gryffindor common room.

As she stormed along the corridors, seething with rage, she wondered what she was meant to do. She was used to having all the answers, and she wasn't prepared to deal with a situation where the answer was not only impossible to find, but being purposefully hidden from her. If she didn't know better (and she did know better, because she had spent more than five minutes with Draco), she would assume that he actually wanted to kiss her.

And if she was taking that assumption as true (which she WASN'T, she told herself resolutely), that just threw up a whole host of new problems. It wasn't that she didn't know about romance. Of course she knew about romance. She had kissed boys, she had seen her friends in the giddy heights of teenage love and in the depths of the ensuing despair. She had watched and lived the romances of her favourite fictional characters. She knew all about romance, and it looked extremely complicated for very little payoff. What was a giggle at shared joke compared to weeks of sobbing in bed listening to a song about losing the supposed love of your life?

She pushed her way through the Portrait of the Fat Lady and immediately saw Ron and Harry sitting in front of one of the windows, sun across the chess board in front of them. She felt a little rush of warmth. This was what it was about: friendliness and shared secrets that didn't have to end in hurt. Waving at them, she pushed her way past the giggling first years, and pulled a chair up to the table. She received a nod from each of the boys for her troubles.

"We've hardly seen you the past couple of days," Ron commented, pushing at one of his pawns with a slightly grimy nail.

"Well, you know how it is." Hermione smiled awkwardly and tried to let the ambience of the Gryffindor common room wash over her. It used to comfort her, and on some level she was sure that it still did. However, she was more concerned by the fact that she actually wanted to claw off her skin and send the rest of her body sprinting down to wherever Draco was. She knew from experience that she would be able to find him so easily, that he was probably looking for her too. And that made her more frustrated than ever and made her want to rip off her own skin for being so incredibly traitorous. All in all, she was fidgeting so much that even Harry and Ron noticed.

"So the spell isn't wearing off?" Harry said sympathetically. It distracted her slightly, in that it made her want to scratch off his face rather than her own.

"Oh yes Harry, it's completely gone," she said sweetly. "I've just decided that sitting still is for squares. I'm now going to wriggle constantly. If you ever wonder what I'm doing, just think 'Hermione is _pretending_ that her body is trying to fight her'. Ok?"

"No need for sarcasm," Harry said, with a slightly hurt expression.

"Harry! What do you want me to say when you ask stupid questions? When the charm wears off, you will know because I will come in leaping for joy!" She slumped back into her chair. "Or the way that this is going, I will hobble in on my zimmer frame and gently wave an osteoporosis-riddled arm."

"Positive thinking, that's the way forward." Ron said absent-mindedly.

"I don't think the situation requires clichés." Hermione spat, and picked at her nails. The three of them sat in a tense silence, Hermione picking at her nails until Ron's queen pounced on Harry's knight and thrashed it to the edge of the board. She jumped and felt her body immediately jerk at the door, seizing the opportunity that had been given to it.

"If it wasn't Draco, I could do it! If it was anyone else, it would be fine!" She burst out, causing the two boys to look at her. "And I hate that my body is fighting my brain!"

Harry and Ron looked at each other, wondering what they were meant to say. "Hermione, if we could stop it, we would."

She looked at them sadly. "I know you would if you could. But you can't. And you can't understand what I'm going through. The only person who can is Draco and it's not exactly like he's someone I want to be talking to. Every time I try to, I just end up so angry and frustrated."

"Why are you talking to him?" Ron asked suspiciously.

"I spend an hour every day with him. It's more than slightly awkward to sit there in silence."

"Well, it's only an hour," Ron muttered.

"Ron, if he speaks to me, I'm not going to sit there in silence. I'm not a spoilt ten year old. And this entire ordeal is so ghastly that I need at least one thing to make this bearable."

"Well, can't we do that?" Harry asked.

"No, not really," Hermione answered, with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Why not?" Harry asked brightly, his mind seizing on a new possibility. "We could come and sit with you and Malfoy. And then you could just talk to him instead of us, and you wouldn't have to feel so irritated."

Now that her time with a capricious, infuriating man-child was about to be taken away from her, it suddenly seemed unusually precious. "Well…we wouldn't be able to have a decent conversation, we would just have him sneering on all the conversations." And making surprisingly astute observations, she thought.

"We can just ignore him. It'll be fun."

"No." She said bluntly. A little too bluntly. "What I mean is…I mean that if we go as a group, I'm just giving Dra- Malfoy ammunition to hit me with. I've got to do this on my own. Don't worry, I'm a big girl."

"But if he's upsetting you…"

"Not so much that I need people to hold my hand. I'm fine." Hermione gave a taut smile and stood up. "I've got some work to catch up on, I'll see you later."

The rest of the day passed for her in a blur of aching moments of slowness and crazy bursts of time where she lost whole hours in thoughts of Draco kissing her.

Finally, the time came when by some unspoken agreement she and Draco would meet at the Room of Requirements. Barely noticing it, she stood up and slipped out of the common room, drawing closer and closer to the meeting place.

However, when it came to the time to walk in front of the blank patch of wall, she found that she couldn't quite do it. She knew that he wasn't in there, she could feel her body still fighting her to find him. But what was she meant to do? She felt humiliated enough after his observations on her earlier that morning, she didn't need to compound her misery by trailing after him like a lovesick puppy. She couldn't deal with wanting him, and she couldn't make herself not want him. Stuck between a Blast-Ended Skrewt and a Basilisk. She slumped to the floor and tipped her head back against the wall.

Draco, meanwhile, prowled along the corridor towards the Room of Requirement. He was just as adrift as Hermione, but far better equipped to deal with it. He knew that he wanted her, and all though he didn't know why, and didn't particularly want to explore the reasons of why, he knew that he would get her. He would just take her, use her as he wanted, and then this would be over. It would be simple and he had no intention of allowing himself to be pulled into the emotional quagmire that Hermione had waded into.

He told himself this repeatedly, and was just beginning to get it firmly ensconced in his mind when he turned a corner and saw Hermione slumped on the floor. He had known that she would be there, he had felt the ache lessen, but he hadn't suspected a picture of despair to be on the floor outside the room.

Walking slowly up to her, he lowered himself onto the floor next to her, and gingerly put an arm across her shoulders. "Why are you here?"

"I don't know." She whispered. "I told myself not to come, I told myself that I can't stand you, but I'm still here. But I couldn't go in, I knew that you were just laugh at me for being a hypocrite. So I sat here, thinking I would leave, but then I felt you coming and I just couldn't leave. I couldn't bear to think that I wouldn't see you for another day, and now I've said way too much and I hate myself for it, and now I've just given you so much more stuff to tease me with." Her voice was rising slightly in pitch and she dropped her forehead onto her knees.

Draco squeezed her shoulder. "I won't tease you if you don't want me too."

"Well that's a huge comfort," she mumbled.

"I don't really want to tease you. I won't talk if you don't want me too. And now I'm being nice to you, which I don't think is usually in my nature and my brain's telling me not to. So why don't we both just ignore what our brains are telling us and do what feels right? Because we're both slightly despondent as it is, and the logical thing to do is do something that makes us feel more positive."

"But that just means we'll end up kissing again." She twisted her face towards him, with her eyes wide, and her eyebrows furrowed.

"Is that so terrible? We like kissing each other." His grey eyes were cool with logic and she couldn't help smiling a little bit.

"But it won't have good consequences."

"Who cares? If it makes us happy, we don't have to worry about anyone else and what they say. Come on, try a Slytherin mentality."

She smiled and as she blinked, Draco saw her lashes brush her check and without thinking, moved his hand so it was cradling her jaw and her cheek. Tipping her face towards his, and watching the look in her eyes, he whispered "why are you so incredibly scared?"

"Because you're so different."

"I'm not going to hurt you." He watched the look in your eyes, and watch the apprehension melt away into the liquid trust that he had been longing to see.

Slowly, so slowly, she moved her hand and slid it into his hair. They were linked together now and the pull towards each other was inexorable. They weren't sure whether it was the charm anymore, they just knew that they only wanted to be close together, holding tight to each other. And slowly, almost painfully slowly, they pressed their mouths together, feeling the warmth and softness behind yielding lips. Their hands locked into each others hair, and they moved slowly, so that Hermione was held in Draco's arms, her arms round his neck as his arms slid around her waist and pressed her tightly to his chest. She could feel his heart beating against hers, and without a thought for who might seem them, kneeling together in the corridor, they entwined themselves, and for the first time forgot about scheming and caution, and lost themselves entirely in the moment.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning, Hermione almost welcomed the nagging of her body. Last night had been so…well for want of a better word it had been blissful! However stupidly optimistic it was of her, she couldn't help but feeling that this was some new kind of détente, and that it would lead to something more special.

There was always the nagging doubt, of course. She was pretty sure that she wasn't going to be able to get through this without this horrid uncertainty plaguing her. However wonderful being with Draco was, it didn't change the fact that they were only in this situation because of a botched spell. It didn't exactly lend any sort of credibility to the situation. There had been no magical moment where their eyes met across a bubbling cauldron, or she had suddenly noticed him in the light of sparks from her wand. This was simply a situation where they had been forced together because of stupid pride and shoddy wand work, and she couldn't help feeling that their reaction to this was either some kind of cabin fever, or an effect of the spell.

But…how did thinking like that help her? She had to be enthusiastic, to just take the things as they came. That was what Draco did, and he was doing well enough on it. So she would do it, and it would be great, and everything would work out for the best. Casting one last glance at her slightly anxious reflection she told herself that optimism was fine, and she could handle anything that this situation could throw at her.

As soon as she walked into the hall, and realised that Draco wasn't there, that cautious optimism evaporated into nothing. Without thinking that they both attended the same boarding school and there weren't really that many ways that Draco would be able to avoid her, Hermione plunged into a whirling maelstrom of confusion. He was always here before her. He was just as dependable as her in that respect. She flicked a quick glance over at the Slytherin table and was greeted with six different glares from six very different, very angry Slytherin girls. Looking ahead again, she realised that she had stopped moving. Harry, Ron and Ginny had noticed her, and were beckoning her fairly frantically. She knew that she needed to move forward and sit with them, but the yearning tug in the pit of her stomach was as insistent as any portkey, and she wanted to obey it more than anything.

She could pretend she had forgotten a textbook, she thought frantically. Ignoring the fact that she was already holding three huge texts close to her chest, she turned promptly on her heel and began hurrying towards the exit. She was so wrapped up in the need to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the huge hall crammed with people, none of whom were the one she desperately needed to see, that she barely noticed the abnormally quick rate at which the pulsating tension that ran through her body was decreasing. She pushed through the door quickly with one hand and slammed straight into Draco.

His hands went to her shoulders, and steadied her. Her books lay across the floor, catapulted from her hands by the force with which she had flown into him. Draco took a minute to compose himself, wondering what the precise etiquette was for a situation like this. That minute stretched out into what he recognised as a fairly gormless silence, as he wondered what he was meant to call her. Granger would be the obvious solution, but holding her last night had made him think that Hermione would probably be more appropriate. Although, however much he wanted to do that, there was still the matter of a public image…

Hermione took three deep breaths in, hoping to calm herself, but only succeeded in dragging his smell deep into her. This had the precise opposite of the intended effect, leaving her with the intense urge to hurl herself into his chest again, and this time, to hold on. "You probably ought to let go of my shoulders," she whispered, conscious that her dramatic exit would have drawn the attention of the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables, and continued contact between the pair of them would do nothing except exacerbate the fraught situation.

Draco looked at his hands in mild confusion. He didn't really remember putting them there, but they felt very good there. He didn't actually want to let go of her shoulders. Noticing Hermione glancing over her shoulder quickly, he looked up and saw Potter and Weasley staring at them with the comically furrowed brows of the terminally confused and easily offended. Smirking, he tightened his grasp on Hermione's shoulders and dragged her out of the entrance to the hall, out of the sight of the gawping students.

Startled out of her bewildered haze by the sudden movement, Hermione pulled herself out of her hands with the usual pang. "What did you do that for? And why are you smirking?"

"Do you want to ask me stupid questions like that now, or do you want to wait for the Wonder Twins to come and ask the questions themselves?" Draco asked,

"You did that to irritate Harry and Ron? Oh for Merlin's sake Draco…so much for you not teasing me and being nice to me." The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to kick herself. That was something that should have been a sarky comment from her internal monologue, not something that she actually said. That had just sounded pathetically needy.

"I'm not teasing you. I'm going to be teasing Potter and Weasley." Draco directed his smirk at her, his silver eyes flashing in the early morning light streaming in through the high set windows.

Hermione thumped his arm as hard as she could, trying to ignore the thrill of temporary contact. "Is that how you spend your spare time? Thinking up provisos to promises?" Turning her back on him, she set about picking her books up off the floor before anyone leaving the hall trampled them.

Draco rubbed his arm. "You just hit me."

"Yes." She hugged her books to her chest again, as though he would be able to see straight through her if she didn't. "You clearly just ignore me whenever I tell you something important or you think of a way to turn it into a joke. So I'm not going to bother arguing with you."

"And yet you aren't storming back into the hall, with your dignity held intact and your sense of moral superiority restored." Draco folded his arms and stared down at her. "And since when did my promises become so important to you?"

Hermione stepped forward and snarled at him, frustrated beyond belief. "In case it had escaped your notice, I am finding it fairly difficult to adapt to this situation, as I am not used to having to spend any amount of time with someone as intolerable as you! I am confused by this spell, and I am having to spend every day living with a mistake that you caused! I was, stupidly as it turns out, clinging to whatever hint of stability I could find."

"If I'm the mistake that you're having to live with," Draco hissed, his eyes sparking, "then why the hell are you taking promises from me?"

"Because it's all I've got, you moron! No one else knows what we're going through, and I'm not really in the mood to listen to bland promises about how the spell will break, when we don't actually know that it will, and you are the only person who knows what we are both going through and I thought that that would be enough to make you summon some common decency!" She inhaled furiously, and narrowed her eyes at him.

Draco opened his mouth to respond angrily, but was interrupted by Harry and Ron storming out into the hall. "Hermione, are you ok?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she snapped. Draco couldn't resist smirking at the fact that it wasn't just him that she was shouting at. Noticing it, she shot him a ferocious glare.

"We just saw him drag you to one side." Thrown off balance by Hermione's aggression, Harry and Ron were slightly more hesitant in their supposed rescue attempt than they had been a minute before.

"No, he didn't. We bumped into each other by mistake. If we touch, the charm makes it difficult for us to let go. He just moved me to one side so that we wouldn't be seen grappling in front of the whole hall." Hermione lied smoothly. Draco's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. He had never seen her improvise that smoothly. He was almost impressed. Almost.

But it was more in his interest if he didn't let the brilliant lie stand, but rather toppled down the fragile house of cards that she had been building. "Well, that's an interesting interpretation of it Granger. I would say that I'm in perfect control of my faculties at all times, and I was perfectly capable of letting go of you. I just chose to move you to one side."

Harry and Ron both opened their mouth to shout at him, but Hermione grabbed their arms. "Just let it go, won't you? He's obviously trying to rile you up, and he's really not worth it. Come on, I want to have something to eat before Potions." Not allowing her guard to slip for a minute, Hermione pushed Harry and Ron in front of her and into the hall, turning to shoot Draco one last furious glower before entering herself. Draco was sure that, mentally at least, she was drawing a finger across her throat menacingly.

Smiling to himself, he went into the hall after them and sat down at his usual place, kicking Goyle's bag away to clear more space for his feet. Pansy was on him instantly. "What the hell was that about?"

"Nothing that concerns you, that's what it was about." Draco snatched up an apple from the bowl in front of him, and bit crisply into it.

"Draco, if Granger is making life hard for you, we ought to do something. We can't have that jumped up little Mudblood thinking she's better than us. We're Purebloods for Merlin's sake!"

"Let it go Parkinson, I told you it doesn't concern you." Draco yawned and turned his attention towards the Gryffindor table. Harry was watching him, while Hermione had resolutely turned her back on him. Grinning, he bit into the apple again, and watched as Potter flinched, almost imperceptibly. He knew exactly why Potter was flinching: he thought that Draco was going to destroy Hermione in exactly the same way that he was tearing into the apple.

Well, fine, if that's what he wanted to think. That served Draco's purpose, and that was the important thing. But truthfully, he was fairly confused by what had just happened. Waking up late, he had allowed himself the indulgence of a few minutes reliving what had happened the night before. He had known that Hermione was vulnerable to a certain extent – only the Slytherins, who were experts at concealing every single truthful emotion were never truly vulnerable – but even when she was clinging to him desperately, there was still a spark in her that made him think that he wouldn't be able to fuck her over. He wasn't even really sure that he wanted to. And he was fairly sure that using Hermione, and then throwing her to one side once he was done with her, counted as fucking her over. So, as he scrubbed the sleep from his eyes, and straightened his tie, he had decided that maybe it wasn't in his best interests to do that. That might upset Hermione, and that would, on some level at least, upset him, and he didn't like being upset.

And then, to have her flying straight into his arms as he went into the dining hall? It felt like some kind of fate intervening, pushing him in a certain way, and telling him that he had set himself on the right path. He had been blown away by how right it felt, confused by how peaceful he felt, even in all the turmoil that was clearly surrounding Hermione. Harry and Ron were clearly the barrier to him attaining that peace. There was no way that he wanted to be friends with them, or that he would even consider some sort of negotiation with them that would enable him to carry on achieving the same kind of peace that he found with Hermione. He would just have to get rid of them in some way. And they were clearly worried about him, which put them at a disadvantage.

He threw the half finished apple to one side, and stood up, ignoring Pansy's shrill demands to know where he was going. Striding out of the hall, he went to Transfiguration, plotting his next move.

Coming out of Potions, Hermione finally thought that she had calmed down enough to face going into the dining hall where she might have to face Draco's smirking face. Her body gave a little jump, as she dared to acknowledge the thought that she might be able to relax a little bit in his presence, just to relieve the constant tension that played along every part of her body. Harry and Ron had pushed ahead and were arguing with Seamus about some manoeuvre that Harry was planning for Quidditch practice, and Hermione let them do so, content to walk behind and half listen to the conversation.

Daydreaming, she felt a sudden slackening on the tension in her shoulder, and heard the clatter of books and quills dropping to the stone floor. Sighing in exasperation, she knelt down to collect everything, examining the split seam along the bottom of her bag as she did so. Waving at Harry and Ron to go on ahead, she crawled across the floor to retrieve her favourite quill. Sitting back on her heels to gather everything into a pile, she noticed that the tension in her shoulder was not the only thing that had lessened. The gnawing in the pit of her stomach had dropped to a near imperceptible level, and the throbbing of her joints was gentle now. Just as she had registered what that must mean, Draco stepped out from the shadows of one of the seldom used corridors.

Scrambling to her feet, Hermione put her hands on her hips and stared coldly at him. "I believe we've already had the conversation about stalking being a criminal offence."

"Well, I was under the impression that you weren't going to be released from the clutches of your friends if I was around. And I wanted to talk to you." Draco twirled his wand idly, and fixed the bag that he had just broken.

"Harry and Ron aren't my jailors, they don't have to release me."

"Excellent. Then you'll be ok to stay here and talk to me." Draco raised an eyebrow, and watched as Hermione crossed her arms.

"I don't see what you could possibly have to say that I would want to listen to."

"Well you can explain where that outburst from this morning came from. I refuse to believe that my insulting Potter and Weasley would rile you so much. I've hardly made a secret of my animosity."

Hermione sighed and bent down to pick up her things, and began slotting them into the repaired bag. "I don't know why I did that. Maybe I've just had enough of you being horrible all the time."

"Liar."

"What?" Hermione's head snapped upright.

"Well, it's this new thing I've got. Whenever someone is shamelessly lying, I've decided to start calling him or her on it by saying 'liar'. So what are you lying for?" Draco had stopped even smirking. He knew she was lying; she had begun flushing as soon as she'd begun talking. Gryffindors might be brave, but they had absolutely no skill in concealing the truth.

Hermione's thoughts began whirling again. How did he do this to her? She had none of his cool calculation: she had prepared the lie that she had told to Harry and Ron ages ago, just in case she and Draco were caught, and even that hadn't stopped her blushing. There was no way she could tell him the truth; that she had begun panicking when he wasn't in the dining hall, and she had been so freakishly relieved to see him, that it had thrown her off balance, made her cross with herself for being so sickeningly dependent on him. She hadn't had a choice but to shout at him, to try and even that playing field.

But he was here, with her now. They were alone, there was no way anyone would be coming along that corridor. She couldn't bear to tell him, she couldn't bear to be away from him. Her body was conspiring with these errant thoughts, prompting her to move one foot forward. Before she knew it, she was taking one hesitant step towards him. Another one brought them within five feet of each other. Draco watched her, unwilling to make another compromise. He had had to push her for every kiss, every hard won embrace. Now, before he involved himself more deeply in something that he wasn't even sure about, some part of him wanted to see the same unerring commitment in her, even in the face of something that neither of them quite dared to confront for what it was.

Coming even closer, so close that he could feel her trembling breath whispering against his own lips, she tiptoed, sliding her hands around his neck, so that she could gently tug his face down to her own. Tentatively, scared that she was the only one making a move, she edged closer to him until her lips just brushed his.

It was a tiny movement, almost imperceptible, a butterfly kiss that ghosted across his lips as gently as the brush of the breeze against a rose petal. But it was all it took. Slipping his arms firmly around her waist, he pulled her closer to him, feeling her soothe the ragged ache that raged through him when she was gone. She moulded to him and tipped her head back, feeling his mouth paint vivid technicolour kisses across her face.

There was no question of anger, no question of pulling back. However much confusion there was, this was the only thing that made sense, the only possible answer, and she couldn't bear to let it slip away.

_**AN: Hi everyone…so it's been an incredibly long time since I updated. I want to apologise to all of you, it was never my intention to go this long without continuing my stories, and I just want to thank all of you that have reviewed in my absence, or asked me to carry on writing. I know that quite a few of you have had your reviews unacknowledged, which I am desperately sorry about because I am truly grateful to every single person who reviews. In explanation for my unplanned hiatus, a number of things have slowed me down: finishing my law degree took up a lot of time, and there was a family bereavement, a cheating boyfriend which led to a broken heart, issues with friends and a diagnosis of clinical depression (the last of which is extremely mild, but still necessitated some rather frantic moments). But I have everything back under control now (thank whichever deity you believe in, I'm far too much of a control freak not to be!), and will continue updating as regularly as I can. On a more positive note – thank you for reading, I truly hope that you enjoyed this chapter, and as always – reviews are enormously appreciated (and I promise to respond to every single one). Lots of love…petitesorciere xxx**_


	8. Chapter 8

Hermione sat by the lake, her back pressed firmly into the rough bark of the tree behind her. Watching out across the glittering water, she idly levitated an apple in front of her, gently waving her wand and watching the fruit bob around in front of her. It was green, rather than the glossy red of the apple that haunted her dreams now, and the taste of which lingered in every kiss that she and Draco shared, but the association was more than enough to make her put off eating the apple for as long as she could.

A shadow fell across her body and she looked up, just as Draco's pale hand cut through the air and snatched the apple from air. "I'd have thought you'd be sick of the sight of apples."

"You still eat them, don't you?" Hermione focussed on the taut skin of the fruit, rather than the long fingers holding it. "Why can't I eat them?"

"I still eat them because I'm dealing with the whole situation better than you." Draco grinned at her and raised the apple to his mouth.

Before he could take a bite, Hermione hit his hand from beneath, sending the apple flying into the air. Snatching it back quickly, she bit into it before he could take it back. Feeling the juice burst across her tongue as the fruit yielded, she watched Draco, the corners of his mouth turning up as he watched her chew slowly. Swallowing deliberately and raising an eyebrow, Hermione answered him. "I would say that I'm dealing with this just as well as you are."

Draco nodded once. "That could be possible."

"Most things are. I tell you one thing that is both possible and necessary: an explanation as to why you're talking to me in public?"

"Well, it's not really public is it? You are the only person out here."

"It's just a bit of a departure from you hanging around in dark corridors and making my bag split so that you've got an excuse to talk to me."

"I've moved onto stealing your things so that you'll have to talk to me." Draco made a grab for the apple but Hermione immediately held it back away from him, stretching her arm out behind her.

"I was always taught not to negotiate with criminals," she laughed, leaning further back as Draco moved forward.

Draco watched her for a minute, the line of her body clear against the cut grass and the darkness of the tree trunk. Then, lunging forward unexpectedly, he knocked out the elbow that she was leaning on, sending her falling back to the grass.

Her breath escaping from her in one quick gasp, Hermione's head swirled as she took in the kaleidoscope of blue sky, green leaves and Draco's face filling her vision as he pressed forward, his body covering hers briefly as he kissed her. A soft breeze rustled the tree above them, and she could feel small twigs pressing into her back, as soft blades of grass tickled the back of her neck. Lost in the moment, Hermione linked her hands behind Draco's neck, tugging him closer, and feeling the weight of his lean body pushing her into the grass.

They drew apart, their pupils dilated as their eyes widened in shock at the boundary that they had just crossed. Draco sat up quickly and fought with himself not to lean forward again and carry on kissing Hermione. A ripple of tension ran through his body as he watched her pull herself to a sitting position and move away from him slightly, and by watching her face, he could see the exact same battle taking place. Now that they had lost the ability to hate each other, the longing between them to remain as close as they possibly could seemed all the more intense.

As Hermione brushed her hair nervously back from her face, and cast a sideways glance at the foot of empty space between her and Draco, she wondered what could have happened to make bridging that gap such an attractive option. She knew about the enchantment, obviously, but she had needed the distance that hatred had given her to maintain her dignity and her independence. She felt so vulnerable now, more desperate than ever for the charm to break, so that she could at least know whether this all-consuming longing was actually due to her own emotions or simply because of student stupidity.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Draco said, looking straight ahead.

"Not just me then?"

"Not just you," he conceded. "All I know is that I want to be with you all the time. And I don't know why."

"Well, it's the charm," Hermione began, but Draco cut across her angrily.

"You can stop with the party line Hermione. I think we're both perfectly aware that this is more than a charm."

"How do you know that? Are you really so superior that you think you're able to define the limits of a spell that's never been cast before?"

"Why do you do that? You go from nought to angry in about three seconds, as soon as you think that I might know something that you don't." Draco looked at her sideways, and pushed his hair back from his silver eyes. "And you must have noticed this. Aren't you finding it easier to get to sleep now? Our bodies aren't aching all the time, and we can touch each other without sticking together."

"Well, we ought to be able to spend more time apart then." Hermione shrugged, faking a nonchalance that she wasn't even close to feeling.

"Is it that simple for you?" Draco asked. "I'm worried that the spell is spreading from our bodies to our minds. What happens if we end up spending the rest of our lives together, only for the spell to break and us to find that we've wasted years upon years?"

"You utter moron," Hermione said coldly. "I can assure you that spending the rest of your life with me would be anything but a waste of time."

"I didn't mean it like that," Draco sighed, closing his eyes briefly as he realised exactly what he had said.

"What the hell did you mean then?" Hermione stood up, taking advantage of the fact that she was briefly taller than him. "That I'm such an awful person to be with, that you can't bear the thought of spending any significant amount of time with me?"

"No, I just meant that we can't trust what we think we're feeling! How are we meant to even think about anything for our futures, when we might not even be able to trust our most basic impulses?"

"And I'm the one who goes from one extreme to the other every few minutes? You've just gone from saying you can't bear the thought of wasting the rest of your life with me, to saying that you're considering a joint future!"

Draco jumped to his feet and shouted down at her. "You are so arrogant! You think that all of this is revolving around you, and how you want the world to fall into place around you!"

"Says the Slytherin who spends his entire life calculating an image, and manipulating people into acting the way he wants them to!"

"At least I can be honest about what I want, even when I'm not quite sure what that is!" Draco's eyes were narrow now, glinting in the early afternoon sun.

"Well, how about you let me know, when you've figured it out Draco. And as I'm so arrogant, I'll let you know whether I have time for your manipulation in my plans for how I want the world to act around me." Hermione turned on her heel and marched away.

Draco looked after her, and then let his eyes fall to the ground. She had stamped on the apple as she left, its pale, creamy flesh shattered across the green grass. He flashed back to the image of the enchanted apple on the Charms classroom floor, its red skin slowly knitting back together into a glossy finish that had permeated every single area of his life.

He honestly didn't know what he wanted with Hermione. He had thought that the spell might have been wearing off for a few days now, when he had noticed that he hadn't spent every minute fighting his own body. His body had stopped jumping in her general direction as soon as he relaxed his muscles. But there hadn't been any decrease in the amount of time he wanted to spend with her. Instead, there had simply been a move towards an intellectual longing to spend time with her. He couldn't help feeling that a lot of that feeling was based around the expression in her eyes whenever they broke apart from whatever passionate clinch they may have been in. But even her infinite capacity to think she knew every single answer didn't irritate him the way it used to. He even found it quite endearing at this point.

It was such a radical change in opinion that Draco felt he had no choice but to doubt the veracity of his feelings. He hadn't considered making such a change, and he hadn't made any conscious decisions to change his opinion, and therefore, he couldn't see how such a change had come about. The one reasonable conclusion, as far as he could see, was that the spell was increasing its hold over him.

He didn't see this being a huge problem, at least not in the short term. He was perfectly happy with the way things were, and could even see himself being…well, public, with Hermione. Not hiding in dark corners with her, but sitting out in the sun with her. That was why he'd had to kiss her. Sitting out in the sun, it was the first time that he had ever properly seen the sun curl its light through her hair. He knew now that he wanted to see it again.

But long term, he couldn't help but wonder what they would do if these feelings were simply the result of a charm, and they became more and more invested in each other emotionally, only to find that all that chemistry between them simply dissolved as an unnatural piece of fruit lost whatever magical powers it had.

This was where he admired, and envied, Hermione the most. She didn't seem to be facing any of these conflicting emotions. Or if she was, she was holding them in check much better than he was able to. She had just assumed that whatever feelings they had were their own, and as such, that meant that any problems could be easily resolved. Sighing, and sitting back against the tree, keeping his eyes on the destroyed apple in front of him, Draco reflected on his options.

He already knew that keeping away from Hermione wasn't an option. Although after his badly thought out speech from earlier, it was entirely possible that she would be more than happy to keep away from him.

He could try and remain unemotional about the whole affair. But even that seemed fairly unlikely at this point. The fact that he was concerned enough to spend a significant amount of time thinking about his relationship with Hermione certainly represented an emotional investment that was entirely unlike him.

And, thinking further on the matter, Draco realised that he didn't really want to try and remain detached about Hermione. He had spent his entire life being careful not to show emotion, to always think in the long-term. That wasn't what he wanted to be doing with Hermione. She made him feel different, for want of a better word. Happier than any other faux-relationship with a Slytherin girl, simply for the sake of social standing, had ever made him. Now that he had experienced such a relationship, it made a lot more sense for him to be continuing in such a relationship. Happiness was something beyond calculation.

Standing up suddenly, he looked back towards the castle. He could just see Hermione running up the steps to the main entrance, her shoulders rigid with anger. Without further thought, he began sprinting across the grounds, his long legs making a quick gain on the head start that she had had.

The first that Hermione knew of Draco's change of heart, was when a strong grip encircled her waist as she tried to run up the main staircase. Turning around quickly, groping through her robes for her wand, she stopped short when she found herself nose to nose with Draco. Students walking past them on the stairs shot prying glances, but didn't stop for fear of seeming overly curious. Hermione kept searching through her robes but was slowed down by the realisation that even though Draco was standing on the step beneath her, he was still taller than her. This irritated her in a way that she couldn't quite describe but was more than enough to convince her that she wanted him to feel the same irritation.

"What do you think you're doing?" she hissed.

"Will you stop looking for your wand to jinx the hell out of me, for just one minute and listen to me, please?" Draco snapped back, and she felt a flash of satisfaction that Draco seemed just as irritated as her.

"Hermione? What's going on?" Harry's voice came down from the stairs above them, and Draco's gaze settled behind Hermione's face to see Potter and Weasley running down the stairs in what they no-doubt imagined to be a heroic cavalcade.

Not stopping to give Hermione a chance to explain, he grabbed her hand and dragged her down the stairs, pulling her into a storage closet to one side of the reception hall. Pulling his wand out, he cast the strongest locking spell he could think of and muttered 'muffliato'.

Hermione crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "I would advise you to make the explanation you're about to give me the best one that has ever been concocted in the history of civilisation."

"Don't pretend you're not a little bit thrilled by my spontaneity." Draco tried a smirk, and felt a small thrill as she fought the twitch of her own mouth. "Hermione, I didn't mean what I said about spending time with you being a waste of our lives. I wouldn't ever mean something like that. What I meant was that…I don't know why I feel the way we feel. You're so collected, you're used to feeling emotions, not just pretending to live out the emotions that your peers expect of you. I'm not. But now that I'm feeling the way I'm feeling, I don't want to stop. I don't know whether it's because of this spell, but I don't know that it is. I think that you and I might have something special."

Draco trailed off, wondering if he'd said all he needed to say. Hermione lowered her eyebrow slowly. "Did you mean that, or are you just saying it because you think it will make your life easier?"

"Hermione, given how argumentative the pair of us are, I really don't think having you around is the easier option. But this isn't meant to be easy right?"

"I don't see how anything with you is ever that easy," Hermione answered wryly. "You've certainly complicated matters by dragging me into a locked room in front of Harry and Ron."

"Cross that bridge when we come to it?" Draco suggested, slowly slipping his hands around Hermione's waist and pulling her closer to him.

She jumped and looked at the door, as a particularly loud bang hammered on it and bounced off the walls of the storage cupboard. Draco gently raised a hand to her chin and turned her face back to him. "Hermione, I don't just need you. I want you."

Their lips were almost touching now, her attention completely gone from the noises her angry friends were making. "I thought it was bad to get everything you want," she whispered.

"Nothing that feels this good can possibly be bad." He answered, as their bodies moulded together into one sinuous embrace. Clinging to each other, their mouths melded, and the warmth of forbidden fruit washed over them. Everything was lost, blurred into nothingness, and all that they could see was each other.

_**AN: Hope you enjoyed, all reviews appreciated enormously! Petitesorciere xxx**_


	9. Chapter 9

Hermione sat in front of Harry and Ron, trying to radiate a sense of extreme displeasure and irritation. She had seen Draco doing it from across the Dining Hall and was sure that if she could just get the posture right, she would be able to exude the same icy awareness of distance that he did. She pressed her back firmly into the soft armchair, hoping to fortify her spine with some semblance of strength.

She was sure that she didn't want to give up what she had with Draco. She was more than sure. That was a constant in the confusing situation she had found herself in, but it was so hard to try and reconcile that with the love that she had for her best friends. Despite their various failures at friends at occasional points in the time that they had known each other, it didn't change the fact that she had experienced more with them than she could with anyone else. Standing over an unconscious mountain troll in first year robes that were slightly too big for her, and looking sheepishly at Harry and Ron, she had been very aware of the fact that she would be unable to ever experience that kind of thing with anyone else.

Which meant that she was torn. As they were her friends, she needed their approval. She even wanted to talk about it with them, although having never had a serious boyfriend she had no idea how either of them would stand up in that gossipy department. But she had spent time laughing with them about Malfoy the amazing bouncing ferret. She had even punched Draco before, she had threatened him, and she, Harry and Ron had believed Draco to be at the root of most of the troubles in their school lives. All in all, it was not the most conducive background to introducing a new romantic interest to them.

Breathing deeply, she decided that icy distance was out of the question and instead tried a slightly tentative smile. "So are either of you planning to say anything or are you just going to stare at me?"

Ron and Harry shared a sideways glance, clearly worried about her. And probably quite angry, she added mentally. She had just disappeared into a cupboard with the most antagonistic student in school and hadn't bothered responding to their frantic shouts for quite some time. She blushed at the memory of Draco's tongue tracing across the cupid's bow of her upper lip, drawing her sighs into his mouth.

Fortunately, Harry and Ron seemed oblivious to the tell-tale stain spreading across her cheeks. "Hermione, what is wrong with you?" As she searched for an appropriate answer, she thought that Harry couldn't quite decide where to place the emphasis in that sentence. Rather than sounding angry or questioning, he sounded flat, almost resigned to the idea that there would be something wrong that he could do nothing to solve the problem. She felt a sudden rush of pity for him.

"It's difficult," she answered, rather than prevaricating with lies about not knowing what he was talking about. "You can't understand what I'm going through. You don't know what it's like to fight against your body. Draco knows what I'm going through, and that means that I'm going to be spending more time with him than I normally would have."

She was so caught up in thinking that she wasn't really having to fight against her body anymore, more in that she was having to analyse every romantic and intellectual impulse, that she didn't even notice that she had referred to Malfoy by his forename. Her first sign was when out of her peripheral vision she saw Ron's knuckles thrust against his pale skin as he clenched his fists.

"How much time would you normally be spending with _Draco_ then?" he asked, his voice low but the emphasis firmly in place. Hermione felt her heart leap forward in her chest as she realised what she had just given away. Ron seemed to have realised what the problem was but, unlike Harry, was determined to remove said problem.

"You know Hermione, you haven't been jittering around as much as you have been," Harry noted as he picked up on Ron's intonation.

"I told you, it's complicated."

"What's complicated?"

Hermione dragged a deep breath through her lips, feeling the cool air buffet the tender skin, bringing back memories of Draco gently nipping the skin as he slid gentle hands through her hair and anchored her to him. "The charm. We think it's changing."

"You mean you and _Draco_ think the charm is changing."

"Ron, you aren't helping matters with that attitude." Hermione felt her chest give another leap and lodge itself in her throat. If Draco were there, she was sure that he would know it was there and would drop his blonde head to her neck, letting gentle kisses soothe the anxious lump in her throat. "Yes, Dra…Malfoy and I think that the charm might be changing." She told herself that this wasn't strictly a lie. It was a niggling thought in the back of both of their minds, but they had reached an unspoken agreement that the bliss that they felt with each other was a fair trade for being under the influence of the charm, if it was changing.

"Changing how?" Harry was slightly more suspicious than Ron. She thought that that made sense. Ron was fiery anger, Harry was always that little bit more analytical.

"It's…um…moving from a…uh…physical compulsion to more of a mental one, I suppose." She heard her own halting voice and wondered whether it was really coming from herself. Maybe she was having an out-of-body experience. She scouted around the room to see whether she was seeing it from an odd perspective, whether she had removed herself from this excoriating, embarrassing experience. Unfortunately, it didn't seem as though she was.

There was a long pause.

"Hermione, are you trying to tell me that you're falling in love with Malfoy?" Harry had obviously considered his words, because rather than a disjointed question, it was a steady stream of clear words that ran through her head and splashed off all her thoughts. Hermione was already aware that she was leaving an answer longer than she should have. She ought to have shouted denials straight away, vehemently drowning out their newfound intuition with anger. And now, she ought to be bursting into tears, making herself seem helpless, entirely at the whim of the charm. But she couldn't make herself do it. She could pretend that she wasn't happy with what was happening. She couldn't tell herself that she didn't want something that made her feel so alive, that made her feel complete. When she was entwined around him, she felt right. She belonged to someone, to Draco, and that was that mattered. Considering it with a clinical detachment that seemed to indicate that an out-of-body experience was on it's way at least, she thought that probably meant that she was in love with Draco.

The thought of it was insane. She wanted to give in to whatever kind of hysteria was threatening to envelop her, just at the thought of it. She, Hermione Granger, was falling in love with Draco Malfoy! She didn't know whether she was making this choice, or whether a spell was making it for her. But the fact remained; she was falling in love with Draco.

She was too swept up in this thought to even bother listening to Harry and Ron. It was such a weird thought that she wasn't quite sure how to process it. She couldn't tell him…not yet, at least. She would have to wait, until she was sure that it wasn't just the spell. Still, the thought was there. That was enough for now. It was the crowning jewel in the entire bizarre saga.

She blinked and saw that Harry and Ron were staring at her, as though waiting for an answer. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"We didn't say anything else. We were waiting to hear whether you're falling in love with Malfoy or not?" Ron raised an eyebrow at her and clenched his fingers around the armrests of his chair.

Hermione flipped a coin mentally. Heads, she would tell the truth, no matter how horrible. Tails, she would lie, and buy herself some time. As soon as she had the thought, she saw the coin land firmly with the tail side pointing up. "No, don't be silly," she laughed, berating herself for her cowardice. "It's just that, I can't help feeling more friendly to him than usual because of the situation we're in. Don't worry, once this is all over, I'll be back to normal."

She told herself that that wasn't strictly a lie. Once the whole thing was over, she probably would seem exactly the same as she had before. She just didn't know when it would end. And she certainly didn't need to tell them that she was hoping that it wouldn't end. Smiling brightly at her friends, she felt her heart give a small little pulse of familial love and pity. They were so trusting, and they only wanted what was best for her. She just couldn't give them that at the moment. She pushed herself up and made a move towards the door, already yearning to see Draco. She knew that he would be going into the Room of Requirements now, settling himself into the red velvet loveseat, ready for her to join herself to his side.

"Where are you going?" Ron sat bolt upright and made to reach out and grab her wrist.

Hermione skipped promptly out of his reach. "I am going to go and do some work. Probably in the library. See you later!" Without waiting for a further response, she moved for the door as quickly as she possibly could.

As soon as she was past the portrait of the Fat Lady, she smiled, touching her fingers to her lips in an unconscious recognition of what was coming. Dashing through the corridors, walking past couples who were able to kiss openly in the arches of the pane windows, she arrived at the blank stretch of wall that led to Draco.

She walked through the magic door, virtually quivering with anticipation and excitement simply at the thought of seeing Draco. "What the…?" she murmured as she walked into the room. The loveseat was still there, but now it was just an accessory to the four-poster bed that sat beneath luxurious crimson and cream draping. Draco spun around, looking more flustered than she had ever seen him.

"Hermione! I didn't ask it do this, I promise."

Hermione half-laughed at the expression on his face. "How did it get there then?"

"I don't know! I've tried coming in and out of the room three times, but every time, it just puts the bed back here. I don't know why it's doing it." Draco looked at Hermione, a smile quirking the corners of her mouth as she tried not to laugh at his panic. With the soft light of a flickering fire highlighting the planes and arcs of her face, he thought that he probably did know why the bed was there, but he hadn't _consciously_ asked for it. Now all he could think was that she would assume that he was trying to pressure her, which he wasn't but if she wanted to that was an entirely different matter…Running a hand back through his hair, he sighed and tried to slow his thoughts down into one coherent stream rather than a frantic jumble. He smiled at Hermione and decided to wait for her to make the first move.

She stepped forward, took his hand and drew him gently to the sofa. Waiting until he had sat down, she settled next to him, fitting the curves of her body to his. Draco wrapped his arms around her waist and felt her rest her head against his shoulder, her nose pressed to his neck. "Hi," she whispered, so quietly that he barely heard her.

"Hi yourself," he answered, his voice rumbling through her head and all the way down her spine. "What took you so long?"

"I was just trying to give Harry and Ron a reasonable explanation as to why we vanished into a mop cupboard for half an hour earlier."

"What did you settle on?" Draco asked, not bothering to think up a jibe. Instead, he settled for gently trailing his fingers up and down two inches of her waist, and feeling her breath catch slightly.

Hermione ignored the soft tickling as best she could, and lifted her head to look at him. "I used the feminine art of diversion and promised them everything without really saying anything."

"That doesn't sound like you," Draco pressed his forehead to hers and let the words trickle into the tiny space between them.

"I don't want them to know about this. Not yet." Hermione's entire world was becoming Draco in that precise moment: he filled her vision, her hearing, pressed into every thought she had and then expanded beyond that. But still, there was the bed, its promise unspoken but more inviting than anything she had ever considered. "Draco, that bed…is it there because you want to..um…you know?"

"Well that's not the kind of perspicacity I expect from you Miss Granger," he murmured. "But it is entirely possible."

"Without you ever wanting to pressure me in any way, of course."

"I feel like the room is pushing for this more than I am."

There lips were practically touching now, the words just soft purrs into a space that was becoming easier and easier to bridge.

"And it's probably a very bad idea because we don't know whether we really want to do this, or whether it's a dodgy charm."

"But then either way, we win. No matter why, we want to do this."

They couldn't tell who was saying what now, their thoughts merging together into one persuasive urge.

"So, we could…" But before either of them could complete the sentence, their lips were together. They both knew that this time nothing would be stopping them, that they were in this together and there was no way they were going to be stopping.

Their mouths moved against hot lips, along smooth necks and felt beating pulses beneath the pale skin. Before they even realised it themselves, they were on the canopied bed, slowly and gently removing the trappings of every day life. They became more than a girl and a boy, more than students, more than a Gryffindor and a Slytherin and each watched as the other blossomed into something else.

Hands skimmed across warm skin and small gasps of surprise at the pleasure that this elicited were soon the only sound that filled the room. The fire obligingly faded to a small glow, casting a rosy light that did nothing to prevent them from seeing all too clearly what they were doing.

He met her eyes in the single crucial moment as they both watched a peak come closer and closer. With no warning they toppled over the edge and fell towards a smoky sea that gathered them into a balmy embrace and left them languorous and loving.

They didn't need to say anything afterwards. Draco gathered Hermione to him and buried his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder, their hands lacing together in front of her stomach as she pressed her back into him. Complete, they slept as the fire burned out and their dreams filled the room around them.

AN: Well, I hope you liked that. Sorry it took a bit longer than usual, I wanted to get the end bit right! Please please review, I am always very grateful, and I love getting feedback. Lots of love…petitesorciere. P.S. I am on twitter, so if any of you lovely people are, you can follow me Madi_Spence, if you feel like it.


	10. Chapter 10

"I know you're watching me," Draco murmured, and Hermione smiled guiltily, her head propped on her hand. "And it's stopping me sleeping."

"Is that really a problem?" Hermione poked him in an interesting place, and Draco cracked an eye open.

"Don't do that if you don't mean it."

"I mean it," she giggled as the covers rustled and Draco's strong arms encircled her waist. They pressed together, and just as Hermione began losing herself in the embrace, she noticed that the light hitting her eyelids was far too bright.

She pushed back at Draco's shoulders, mumbling into his mouth. "Draco, Draco, look how late it is! We need to go!"

"Why?" Draco kept kissing her, his lips against her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes, nuzzling into her neck. "It's Saturday. No classes."

"Harry…Ron…they'll wonder where I am," she whispered.

"Let them wonder. They aren't going to be able to make you feel this way."

Hermione sighed voluptuously and wriggled closer to him, even while she was knowing that she had to pull away from him again. "Surely in the interests of a quiet life, I should just make sure that Harry and Ron aren't worrying about me any more than they already are?" Not waiting for a response, she twisted out from underneath Draco and stood up, wrapping a sheet deftly around her as she did so.

Draco watched her, trying to focus on what she had said rather than on the creamy shoulders rising above the cherry-red sheets. Her lips were bruised from the passion of last night, and her eyes looked wide and dreamy. "Stay with me."

"Stop tempting me," she smiled and nimbly wriggled her knickers up her legs without exposing anything. Draco watched her, and gently took her hand and pulled her closer. Sitting upright, he settled her against his chest, gently smoothing her hair down.

"Would it be that bad if they did know?"

Hermione quieted in his arms. "I thought you didn't want anyone to know?"

"I thought neither of us wanted to tell anyone. But this seems to be going slightly beyond what we originally thought. I never thought this would be happening, I never imagined that I would feel this way about _anyone_. I mean, you're currently in bed with a man who's the epitome of self-obsession. But he cares more about what you think right now then about what anyone has thought of him for his entire life."

"He also has the unnerving habit of referring to himself in the third person."

"Stop that." Draco poked her in an interesting place, and she twisted back to look at him with a smirk on her face.

"Don't do that unless you mean it."

"I'm trying to tell you that I mean it, but you're picking holes in my grammar instead."

"I know you mean it, I know…I just…I don't know."

"Don't know about me?" Draco raised an eyebrow sardonically, but Hermione could have sworn she saw a momentary quaver.

"No, of course I know about you. I just don't know what it would accomplish to let everyone else know about us."

"Why do we care what they think?"

"Because I don't want to lose my friends, and honestly Draco, that's exactly what's going to happen."

"I don't have friends, I have acquaintances and honestly Hermione, even if they were my friends, I couldn't care less what they think of me."

"Says the boy who spends ages trying to portray the perfect image."

"Boy? Oh please Hermione. I'm not a kid. And neither are you, why do you care what people think of you?"

Hermione tore herself away from him and began pulling on clothes. "Because I like my friends, and I don't want to see them upset!"

Draco pulled himself out of bed and began dressing himself angrily, trying to force his limbs through the tangle of his clothes. "And what about what you want? Does that not come into it at all?"

"Well, every so often people do this thing called self-sacrifice, where they put their friends before themselves…it's the right thing to do!" Hermione did up the last button on her shirt and stared at Draco with her hands on her hips. She didn't feel any less vulnerable now that she had her clothes on. If anything, she felt more exposed than ever, covered in the trappings of something that made her so totally different to Draco.

"Why do you care so much about the right thing to do? Does that make us the wrong thing?"

"Well, you've got to admit that there is something taboo about this whole situation!"

"Taboo? Oh for Merlin's sake Hermione! Taboos are for weak people, people who are too afraid of themselves to actually do what they want! And I never thought you were that kind of person! I thought Gryffindors were meant to be brave! So why don't you grow up, realise what it is that you want, and take control and have it, rather than simpering along with societal norms and pretending that your happy with playing the martyr!"

Hermione watched him, his shoulders rising up and down with the anger of what he had just said, and felt a similar flush of heat rush through her cheeks. Without stopping to even consider her actions, she shoved hard at him, sending him flying onto his back on the bed. Before he had time to collect himself, she had thrown herself at him, kneeling over him and pinning him to the bed. She bent down, kissing him fiercely, biting at his lip, tugging at his hair. Pausing for a minute, she growled down at him, "Don't you dare call me a coward."

"Then stop acting like one," he snarled back. He sat up, so that she was in his lap, her legs crossed around his back, and her fingers laced around the back of her neck. Pulling her closer to him, he kissed her back just as angrily as she had kissed him.

"Fine, come on then." She pushed even closer to him, and he stood up, still holding her legs around his waist as he walked towards the door. Suddenly, they pulled apart, and he looked up into her face, stuck with the impossibility of having her and struck with the impossibility of letting her go. Gently, he let her legs go, let her stand up in front of him.

"I'm sorry." He stroked a finger down the side of her face, and pushed a strand of hair out of her face where it had gotten tangled in her eyelashes. "We'll do what you want. We don't have to tell anyone."

"Yes, we do." She smiled up at him, all her ferocity gone now. "Draco, neither of us believes this is a spell. It might have started out this way, but now we both know that it's more than that."

"So, what are we going to do?"

"We're going to go down there together?"

"You asking me or telling me?"

"We're going to go down there together." Hermione smiled at him, straightened her shirt and slid her hand into his.

Draco pushed her hair back with his free hand, while she smoothed down his tie with her free hand. Then, interlinked, they walked through the wall out of the Room of Requirements.

Hermione felt her heart rise further up in her throat the closer they got to the Dining Hall. "Draco?"

"Scared?"

"Nope."

"Apprehensive?"

"That's a better word." She clutched a little tighter at his hand.

"Granger, come on. What's the worst that they can do?" Draco smirked down at her, and she was so simultaneously irritated and happy that she couldn't do anything but walk in to the Dining Hall next to him.

There wasn't a huge dramatic hush, which was what Hermione had been expecting. Instead, they went virtually unobserved. Hermione led Draco up the aisles between the tables towards where Harry and Ron were sitting.

"Hermione!" Ron looked happy to see her until he noticed who she was with. "Malfoy, can we help you?"

Hermione held up their interlinked hands sheepishly. "Ron, I may not have been totally honest when I said that I wasn't in love with Draco."

She watched his colour fade, until his freckles looked incredibly bright against his white skin. "Ron, please say something. Please."

"But, it's the spell," Harry cut in. "You said this yourself, it's just a spell."

"We don't think it is." Draco replied.

"Not asking for your input here Malfoy,"

"My input would be fairly important here Weasley." Draco hissed back.

"Stop." Hermione turned to him. "That is not going to help matters."

"Suppose not." He stood quietly, settling for staring balefully at Harry and Ron.

"Hermione, look, it's just confusing for you at the moment because of this spell, but like you said, it will wear off. Please, don't start doing something like this." Harry stood up, and tried to gently pull Hermione away from Draco.

She held onto Draco, while smiling sweetly at Harry. "Harry, I promise you, I'm not confused. I promise you that I know exactly what I'm doing, and," she broke off for a minute to scowl at Harry who was still trying to pull her away "I promise you that if you don't stop trying to shepherd me around, I will get very angry."

"See what you've done to her!" Ron turned to Draco angrily, his voice beginning to attract glances.

"I haven't done anything to her except treat her as something beyond a talking textbook!"

"You clearly have done something to her! Hermione never does stuff like this!"

"The three of you can stop talking about me like I'm not here. And I suggest that we maybe go somewhere a little more private."

Ron stood up angrily. "Where's that apple? You know, the one that he did wrong so that you've ended up like this."

"Professor Flitwick's class, he wanted to keep hold of it, but Ron, really this is not due to the spell, it's…"

But Hermione was wasting her time, Ron was already storming down through the aisles. She turned to Harry, and widened her eyes pleadingly. "Harry, please can we just go somewhere else."

"Hermione, really, what do you want me to say?" Harry looked at Draco with loathing. "That prick has been responsible for pretty much every single thing that's been wrong with Hogwarts since we've started."

"Please Harry, please."

"Hermione, you're wasting your time. He's already made up his mind that he's not happy with this. Look, we don't need to care what he thinks." Draco tightened his hand around Hermione's.

"So what are you trying to do, take her away from us?"

"No, I'm trying to take care of her. It's something you don't really do Potter." Draco's pale cold face was rigid with disdain. "You're so caught up in her taking care of you, that you have ignored the fact that she might actually need someone to take care of her as well." He turned to Hermione "And that is not me trying to control you, or take you away from anyone, it is just me thinking that in every relationship people are meant to take care of each other. And it doesn't look like anyone's ever done that for you."

Hermione smiled up at Draco. "I'll take care of you too."

A frigid voice came from behind them. "Well, nauseatingly endearing though this is, I do have to wonder exactly what you're thinking Draco."

Hermione and Draco spun around, to see Blaise Zabini standing behind them. "Watch yourself Zabini."

"Honestly, you and the Mudblood? Taking advantage of some sort of taboo?"

Hermione turned to Draco, the pair of them smiling over the memories. A discernable spark flew between them, causing ripples of confusion through everyone gathered.

"Hermione, please stop looking at Malfoy like that." Harry said in a pained voice.

"Can't help it." Hermione murmured, not even bothering to look at Harry.

"Potter, I am not trying to screw her over. Trust me. I know it's hard to do, but trust me." Draco didn't look at Harry either, instead choosing to brush Hermione's hair back from her face.

"Get your filthy hands off her Malfoy!" Ron came running back up the hall, clutching an apple in one hand. The glossy, passionate red of the apple that haunted every single one of Hermione's remaining doubts about Draco. "Hermione, please just trust me that this is not real, you can do so much better!"

"No she can't!" Pansy Parkinson's shrill voice came from behind her and Draco. "She's a Mudblood! Draco is lowering himself just to go near her."

"Shut up Parkinson!" Draco, Harry and Ron shouted in unison. More and more people were looking now, and Hermione was wishing that the entire horrid scene would just be over. She wanted Draco; she needed Draco, why couldn't everyone else just understand that?

"Don't tell me to shut up! Draco, what the hell are you doing with her!"

"Get the hell away from her Malfoy!"

"Snap out of it Hermione, you don't want anything to do with him!"

"Don't tell me what I want, I know what I want and it's him!"

"Maybe I'm just taking care of her, something that you've never managed!"

The voices got louder and louder, the row escalating further and further. Nothing could interrupt anyone it seemed, until Ron shouted louder than all of them. "I know what can end the whole bloody thing!"

He raised the apple up high, and hurled it to the ground. Draco and Hermione watched the apple hurtle towards the ground as if in slow motion, its lustrous sheen seeming brighter and brighter the closer it came to oblivion. Then, with one sickening crunch, it shattered onto the floor, the crisp white flesh splattering across the tiled floor. The red glow that had lit the skin faded away, leaving a mundane green skin behind.

Hermione and Draco looked at each other. Their hands were still interlinked. "Do you feel different?" Draco asked Hermione anxiously.

"No." She smiled at him. "Not at all."

"Only one way to test it I suppose." Draco leaned down and kissed her without a thought for all the curious eyes on them. Hermione felt herself melt into him like every other time. She raised her hands, linking her hands around his neck. Pulling apart slightly, she whispered. "Not different at all."

He felt her breath on his lips and smiled. The apple had never cursed them to love each other, it had only shown them something that was meant to be, a deep and lingering feeling that should have been there all along but had never been allowed to flourish.

Smiling at each other, ignoring the hubbub of noise that was beginning to swell around them already, they held hands again. Together, Hermione and Draco walked out of the Hall, stepping over the remains of the forbidden fruit.

AN: Again, another very long wait. But I wanted to get this chapter finished, and I couldn't get it right for quite a while. Still, I hope you like it, I hope you thought the ending was worth it. I was going to have it ending with the apple breaking, but I don't like sad endings, so there we go. Anyway, I have a few more ideas buzzing around in my head, so hopefully there'll be something new up soon. In the meantime, I have a load more stories on my author page, so I hope you'll check them out. Thank you for reading, major loveage to all of you! Petitesorciere xxx


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